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Evaluate replacing JsonConvert serialization

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Assessment

Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Newbie friendliness
25/100
Issue type
Refactor
Clarity
Needs clarification
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
csharp
Domain
tooling

Research direction

Start by tracing how Installer savedState is serialized and deserialized, then compare the netstandard2.0 serializer options discussed in the issue, including NetDataContractSerializer and BinaryFormatter. Verify whether arbitrary IDictionary and child Installer state can round-trip without Json.NET; done means identifying a compatible replacement or documenting why the dependency must remain.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

It looks like you're just using JSON.net to serialize IDictionary in savedState and this could be accomplished with built-in serializers that would remove the dependency on JSON.net (so that a different version can be used or just not bring that dependency along with someone using System.Configuration.Install).

I looked at the reference source and the built-in classes use NetDataContractSerializer which can serialize/deserialize arbitrary types in an IDictionary. We don't have that in netstandard2.0. Another possibility is BinaryFormatter, but that requires ISerializable which IDictionary is not. The concrete type is Hashtable in the underlying implementation for installers.

@flamencist thought this approach might work, but it relies on ToString() to put it in a key value store. Since IDictionary (and Hashtable) can hold any object, this doesn't really work. Some objects may not have a sensible ToString() which would end up with the type name in the output, and they can't really be deserialized in this manner.

In the Installer source I looked at, it appeared that it was putting an integer in there for the count of Installers and then saving all the child Installer states (which can be any object since anyone can inherit Installer).

The reason JsonConvert works is that it serializes the type information too. Is it possible to replace it with something we have in netstandard2.0 so that we don't have to bring along a JSON.Net dependency?

Dominant language
C#
Stars
26
Forks
12
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