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• This proposal has no compatibility issues, we just add default method deserialize(String, Headers, ByteBuffer) which is compatible with the existing Deserializers.

• If someone wants the deserializer to be compatible with older versions of the kafka-clients library they should always implement the byte array-based deserialize methods.

Rejected Alternatives

Another solution I thought of is PoolArea, just like Netty, but this solution is more complicated.