No it wasn't. SparkConf was not serializable.

On Saturday, March 15, 2014, Mridul Muralidharan <notifications@github.com>
wrote:

> In core/src/main/scala/org/apache/spark/Dependency.scala:
>
> >   */
> >  class ShuffleDependency[K, V](
> >      @transient rdd: RDD[_ <: Product2[K, V]],
> >      val partitioner: Partitioner,
> > -    val serializerClass: String = null)
> > +    val serializer: Serializer = null)
>
> Is it 'cos the SparkConf is getting shipped around ?
> If yes, using the broadcast variable should alleviate it ?
>
> —
> Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub<https://github.com/apache/spark/pull/149/files#r10636424>
> .
>