This might sound like a silly question but does an...

# serialization

[Tatum Alenko]

This might sound like a silly question but does anyone mind explaining what characterizes kotlinx.serialization to be considered "reflectionless"?

[spand]

It doesnt use reflection. (Compile time magic instead)

[Tatum Alenko]

That's what I figured as well, but in the source code I see a lot of references to reflection based calls (such as those involving import kotlin.reflect.*). So that's why I'm confused.

[travis]

core/jvmMain/src/kotlinx/serialization/SerializersJvm.kt does use reflection, but is specific to the JVM for providing interop for libraries that rely on reflection.

KClass, as an example, is also used. Despite being in the kotlin.reflect package, it doesn't necessarily indicate reflection (i.e. KClass and some it's methods are multiplatform and useable on platforms that do not support reflection).

So an import of kotlin.reflect.* does not necessarily indicate that reflection is ocurring.