When to use Externalizable instead of writeReplace+readResolve?

Question

In a couple of places I'm using writeReplace and readResolve, which sometimes gets quite verbose. I wonder if using Externalizable could be better (actually, I don't think so, because my objects are mostly immutable, but I may be wrong). Could you give me some good examples of using Externalizable?

Answer 1

I don't see how they are even comparable. writeReplace() etc writes a surrogate object for cases when you want to do that; Externalizable takes over the entire serialization of the current object and its base objects.

What was your motivation fo using writeReplace()?