why to compute serialVersionUID with methods and constructors involved?
I have to do some work on serialization and through my research I
found it quite curious that the algorithm for the serialVersionUID (suid)
considers methods and constructors in addition to fields.
Yet, the serialization specification says methods and constructors are
not involved to incompatible changes on a class.
In fact, with excluding private static fields and private methods and
constructors the suid seems to be meant to be a representation
of the class' public interface.
Potentially incompatible changes on such members won't result
in a incompatible class recognition during deserialization.
As I'm able to live with that, I'm strongly confused about this --IMHO--
inconsistency. Maybe there is someone out there which could help me out
to understand that.
thx, joerg
