I'm starting to use thrift for an existing Java/Scala project to provide RPC access to a set of services. One notable feature of Thrift (compared to other serialization frameworks) is that Thrift appears be responsible, not only for serialization, but also generating the (server) data structures. In many cases, this makes it difficult to use with existing methods of serialization, such as hibernate, that might employ annotation of types. :-(
While there are workarounds - these are a LOT of work for an existing project and in some cases leads to additionally marshaling from Thrift's MyObject type to another same-but-different version of the same type -- its precisely this boilerplate that what I'd like to avoid by employing automated code generation. So, is it possible to separate the Thrift-generated serialization code from the POJO class definition (leaving my to edit those myself)? I suspect not because its looks like things are required to inherit from TBase, though I'm not sure how extensive this dependency is. (Am also looking at Swift, but am concerned about the overheards due to reflection). - Stuart
