/*
 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one
 * or more contributor license agreements.  See the NOTICE file
 * distributed with this work for additional information
 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file
 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the
 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance
 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at
 * 
 *      http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
 * 
 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
 * distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
 * WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
 * See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
 * limitations under the License.
 */

package net.jini.core.entry;

/**
 * Required by service utilities to avoid sharing internal state. All cloned
 * instances should be deep copies.
 * 
 * @since 3.0.0
 */
public interface CloneableEntry extends Entry, Cloneable {

    /**
     * Clone has been implemented in AbstractEntry to allow utilities such as
     * {@link net.jini.lookup.ServiceDiscoveryManager} to avoid sharing 
     * internally stored mutable Entry instances with client code.
     * 
     * Entry's that have mutable fields, for example arrays or collections,
     * should override this method, call super.clone(), then safely copy
     * any mutable fields before returning the Entry clone.
     * 
     * @return a clone of the original Entry
     * @since 3.0.0
     */
    public Entry clone();
    
}