Question Private field serialization.

Why does unity serialize private fields in editor and is there any way to disable this for getting better domain reload perf? (a bit unrelated question)Are there any plans for TypeCache at runtime, maybe a package?

 

I'm not sure im following. Unity has a [SerializeField] attribute... which is optional and not just auto implmented... Perhaps im missing some information.

 

While running editor unity serializes private (not marked wit SerializeField) fields, if you have odin inspector this is very easy to observe by marking a private non serialized field with [ShowInInspector] then go inside the editor set a value to the field then trigger a script recompilation, what you will notice is that unity preserved the value you set before domain reload.

 

Ahh, i see, good info (i dont own odin). Cheers.

 

This is, afaik, to support the hot reload feature of Unity that nobody uses because it's so brittle and undocumented.

 

Yes that's why i was asking for a way to disable it since it never helped me or the team i am in, it just adds to domain reload times.

 

I second the idea of having a way of disabling this functionality.

In my case this behavior causes warnings to be logged to the console on every recompilation because of private non-serialized fields with the same name in a base class and derived class.

 

You can decorate these fields with

[NonSerialized]

and Unity will ignore them during reloads.

 

Sorry but serializing private fields by default is downright broken behavior by Unity and it did not use to be like this.

How can we ever start from scratch when private variables are remembered between play sessions? Spamming my code with [NonSerialized] on every single variable I have?

 

They're not. At least not for monobehaviours and other scene objects.

For scriptable objects they will likely persist. But this has always been the behaviour of assets.