[Ginp-developers] Serializabe classes?

[Brian B. <br...@Pi...>]

I'm still plodding through my CheckStyle code cleanup. So far, I've not 
done anything about several classes that are missing javadoc's for 
fields. Before I added a comment, I wanted it to be meaningful.

Here's an example from net.sf.ginp.tags.PageNavigator ...

private static final long serialVersionUID = -6994731253601826937L;


I didn't know what this was for and did some digging. Apparently it is a 
technique for making a class Serializable in a way that supports 
"compatible" code changes that would not be possible if the class were 
to simply implement the java.io.Serializable interface. It becomes the 
programmer's responsibility to decide when a change is not backward 
compatible and generate a new long value.

Well, I still don't get it. Why does net.sf.ginp.tags.PageNavigator need 
to be Serialized at all? Can I simply delete the fields from this type 
of class, or is there some subtle gotcha associated with one of the 
frameworks we are using? I don't think so, but will wait to hear your 
opinion because it isn't worth the risk of breaking a working version.

Regards,

Brian