[groovy-dev] Closure, Registry and MetaClass serialization

Hi all,

before I go and commmit my serialization code there are a few things we 
should maybe discuss.

I made several tries for the serialization code which is the reason why 
it took me so long. Any way, in the last version I decided to not to do 
a full serialization of all things, but go with a mixed 
serialization/recreation technique. What I try to avoid is making our 
custom data structures part of the serialization process. The reason 
behind this is, that they seem not to be stable enough and are part of 
many changes. The problem with serialization now is, that if a field has 
for example has one of our has maps with two keys and is final, then I 
can not serialize the class unless I serialize that data structure or 
remove the final. I decided for removing final, but the result is then 
of course a change in runtime performance.

One of my biggest problems was serializing MetaMethod, because it is 
coupled very tightly to many internal data structures.

So what I serialize is Closure and variant of Closure, including 
subclasses generated by the compiler. I can serialize the registry along 
with MetaClassImpl and ExpandoMetaClass, but serializing modifications 
to EMC will be possible only if the method/property was added using the 
builder Alex made, or the old foo.metaClass.bar = ... style.

I somehow broke mixins somewhere, I still have to fix that, but I guess 
serializing them is possible too.

What won't be serializable is when custom MetaMethods are added. Also