Is there any reason why `kotlinx-serialization-cor...

# serialization

[gildor]

Is there any reason why kotlinx-serialization-core is not format agnostic? All other formats were moved to own dependencies except Json and it’s never was clear for me why, so now it’s impossible to replace bundled Jsom implementation with own version, they will always available side by side, or if json is not used at all. I understand it’s not a big deal in terms of bytecode, it more about API surface, even if it 95% cases used only as json, why not just create dependency for it: kotlinx-serialization-json

It’s rc already, probably too late, but maybe keep kotlinx-serialization-core and reintroduce something like kotlinx-serialization or again runtime which would include only annotations and basic utilities, no formats

[Vsevolod Tolstopyatov [JB]]

This is a good concern, thanks.

The original idea was to provide a single most requested format out-of-the-box, serialization core API by itself is not very useful for application developers. Replacing bundled JSON with a custom 3rd-party JSON format wasn’t even considered.

We still have some time to re-consider it, issues like this are indeed the reason we’ve released RC, not 1.0.0 🙂

[gildor]

Thanks for answer.

serialization core API by itself is not very useful for application developers

It’s true, but having format which is not used in the app/library even less useful

[gildor]

https://github.com/Kotlin/kotlinx.serialization/issues/994