source: trunk/gcc/libjava/java/beans/beancontext/BeanContextChild.java@ 2446

/* java.beans.beancontext.BeanContextChild
   Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This file is part of GNU Classpath.

GNU Classpath is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation; either version 2, or (at your option)
any later version.
 
GNU Classpath is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
General Public License for more details.

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along with GNU Classpath; see the file COPYING.  If not, write to the
Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA
02111-1307 USA.

Linking this library statically or dynamically with other modules is
making a combined work based on this library.  Thus, the terms and
conditions of the GNU General Public License cover the whole
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As a special exception, the copyright holders of this library give you
permission to link this library with independent modules to produce an
executable, regardless of the license terms of these independent
modules, and to copy and distribute the resulting executable under
terms of your choice, provided that you also meet, for each linked
independent module, the terms and conditions of the license of that
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or based on this library.  If you modify this library, you may extend
this exception to your version of the library, but you are not
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exception statement from your version. */


package java.beans.beancontext;

import java.beans.PropertyChangeListener;
import java.beans.VetoableChangeListener;
import java.beans.PropertyVetoException;

/**
 * Beans implement this to get information about the execution environment and its services and to be placed in the hierarchy.
 * <P>
 *
 * The difference between a <code>BeanContext</code> and a
 * <code>BeanContextChild</code>, mainly, is that a
 * <code>BeanContext</code> may be a parent.
 * <P>
 *
 * <code>BeanContextChild</code> instances will be serialized at some
 * point in their life, but you need to make sure your bean context does
 * not contain a serializable reference (directly or indirectly) to the
 * parent <code>BeanContext</code>, to any of the other
 * <code>BeanContext</code>s in the tree, or to any resources obtained
 * via the <code>BeanContextServices</code> interface.  One way to do this
 * is to mark any fields that contain such references as
 * <code>transient</code>.  Another way is to use a custom serializer.
 * <P>
 *
 * If you do not do this, when the <code>BeanContext</code> is serialized,
 * all the other <code>BeanContext</code>s and other unnecessary things
 * will be serialized along with it.
 * <P>
 *
 * Before dying, a <code>BeanContextChild</code> should call
 * <code>getBeanContext().remove(this)</code> to detach from the
 * hierarchy and exit cleanly.
 *
 * @author John Keiser
 * @since JDK1.2
 * @see java.beans.beancontext.BeanContext
 */

public interface BeanContextChild {
        /**
         * Set the parent <code>BeanContext</code>.
         * <P>
         *
         * This method is called from <code>BeanContext.add()</code> and
         * should not be called directly.
         * <P>
         *
         * When this Object is being added to a new BeanContext or moved
         * from an old one, a non-null value will be passed in.
         * <P>
         *