Java 7 Migration - New JBoss Serialization-related exception

Question

I'm trying to upgrade an application to Java 7 from Java 6 and I'm getting a new exception that isn't present when running the application under Java 6.

Here's the first section of the stack trace:

java.lang.ClassCastException: java.lang.String cannot be cast to org.jboss.serial.finalcontainers.IntegerContainer
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.DataContainer$DataContainerInput.readInt(DataContainer.java:1044)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.RegularObjectPersister.readSlotWithFields(RegularObjectPersister.java:310)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.RegularObjectPersister.defaultRead(RegularObjectPersister.java:273)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.RegularObjectPersister.readData(RegularObjectPersister.java:241)
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.ObjectDescriptorFactory.readObjectDescriptionFromStreaming(ObjectDescriptorFactory.java:412)
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.ObjectDescriptorFactory.objectFromDescription(ObjectDescriptorFactory.java:82)
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.DataContainer$DataContainerInput.readObject(DataContainer.java:845)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.RegularObjectPersister.readSlotWithFields(RegularObjectPersister.java:353)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.RegulrObjectPersister.defaultRead(RegularObjectPersister.java:273)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.RegularObjectPersister.readData(RegularObjectPersister.java:241)
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.ObjectDescriptorFactory.readObjectDescriptionFromStreaming(ObjectDescriptorFactory.java:412)
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.ObjectDescriptorFactory.objectFromDescription(ObjectDescriptorFactory.java:82)
    at org.jboss.serial.objectmetamodel.DataContainer$DataContainerInput.readObject(DataContainer.java:845)
    at org.jboss.serial.persister.ObjectInputStreamProxy.readObjectOverride(ObjectInputStreamProxy.java:68)
    at java.io.ObjectInputStream.readObject(ObjectInputStream.java:364)
    at java.util.ArrayList.readObject(ArrayList.java:733)
    at sun.reflect.GeneratedMethodAccessor352.invoke(Unknown Source)

I found this JBoss bug, which is supposedly fixed... https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBSER-128

but the version it's fixed in (1.0.6.FINAL) hasn't been released yet: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBSER

Has anybody run into this that could suggest a workaround?

The application runs in JBoss 6.0.0.

PS I am aware that JBoss 6 is past its EOL and not tested with Java 7.

Answer 1

I found a workaround solution for my problem. Since Java 7 changed the serialization behavior of Vector, I changed to ArrayList (which did not change) and the problem has been resolved.

Hope this helps somebody out there struggling with the same issue.

Answer 2

Well, you could build the release yourself from the tag in the SVN repo. Or if you're really trusting (or want to do a quick experiment) download the binary I built (here, won't promise they stay online though).

Just replace all occurrences of the jar in the JBoss distribution and don't forget to enable the fix with system property

-Dorg.jboss.serial.sync_binary_formats=true

As highlighted here https://issues.jboss.org/browse/JBSER-128?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:all-tabpanel

Anyhow for me this worked for Vectors at least (there's other potential problems, but not being able to transfer CCHashMaps I'll survive ;) ).