Serializable class with unconstructable ancestor

Reports Serializable classes whose closest non-serializable ancestor doesn't have a no-argument constructor. Such classes cannot be deserialized and will fail with an InvalidClassException.

Example:

  class Ancestor {
    private String name;
    Ancestor(String name) {
      this.name = name;
    }
  }

  // warning on this class because the superclass is not
  // serializable, and its constructor takes arguments
  class Descendant extends Ancestor implements Serializable {
    Descendant() {
      super("Bob");
    }
  }

Locating this inspection

By ID

Can be used to locate inspection in e.g. Qodana configuration files, where you can quickly enable or disable it, or adjust its settings.

SerializableClassWithUnconstructableAncestor

Via Settings dialog

Path to the inspection settings via IntelliJ Platform IDE Settings dialog, when you need to adjust inspection settings directly from your IDE.

Settings or Preferences | Editor | Inspections | Java | Serialization issues

Inspection ID: SerializableWithUnconstructableAncestor

Suppressing Inspection

You can suppress this inspection by placing the following comment marker before the code fragment where you no longer want messages from this inspection to appear:

//noinspection SerializableClassWithUnconstructableAncestor

More detailed instructions as well as other ways and options that you have can be found in the product documentation:

IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3

Inspection Details
By default bundled with:	IntelliJ IDEA 2025.3, Qodana for JVM 2025.3,

Last modified: 03 December 2025