Using readClassDescriptor() and maybe resolveClass() to permit Serialization versioning

Question

I am investigating different options in the Java Serialization mechanism to allow flexibility in our class structures for version-tolerant storage (and advocating for a diff

Answer 1

This is what writeReplace() and readResolve() are for. You're making it much more complicated than it really is. Note that you can define these methods either in the two objects concerned or in subclasses of thee Object stream classes.