[java] obfuscating code

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Original post by gorgorath are there any free programs that will let me obfuscate the code,

ProGuard

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Original post by gorgorath like creating classes only compatible with x86 or so

I'm not sure possibly you can get something to put a class in an exe file, but this kinda defeats the point of JAVA.

You can use ProGuard, JODE or RetroGuard. You can use jsmooth to wrap your classes into an executable.

Please note that such actions are fairly childish, though, as your work is perfectly protected by copyright law and needs no other safeguards to be "yours".

I don't seem much point in doing that. What's the harm if someone gets a look at the source code? Even if you could obfuscate it, the same results could be reproduced without getting a look at the source code, or any reverse engineering at all. I think this falls into the "mostly pointless" category, as well as the "mostly futile" category.

Use of the obfuscators such as Proguard is:

- To discourage reverse engineering (i.e. unauthorised modification) of classfiles (It does make it quite a bit harder, but still not massively difficult).
- To reduce the size of .jar files - particularly important for J2ME games
- CAN make the application load faster - some obfuscators also do a certain amount of optimisation. I believe that proguard can inline some methods (and maybe constants), plus removes dead code.

Mark

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Original post by Anonymous Poster I believe you mean optimization with a 'z'.

Not all the world is American! Many of us (For example, Australia and the UK) spell it "optimisation". Another example is "colour", not "color".

I'm not sure why Americans had to be different but I guess thats the way they are.

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Original post by Anonymous Poster And can't you just encrypt your .jar files?

And what will decrypt these files. You'll need a key built into the software somewhere. In that case, it'll only prevent the most casual attempts at reverse engineering.