About:
ProGuard is a free Java class file shrinker, optimizer, obfuscator, and preverifier. It detects and removes unused classes, fields, methods, and attributes. It optimizes bytecode and removes unused instructions. It renames the remaining classes, fields, and methods using short meaningless names. Finally, it preverifies the processed code for Java 6 or for Java Micro Edition. The resulting jars are more compact and more difficult to reverse-engineer. Advantages of ProGuard compared to other Java shrinkers and obfuscators are compact template-based configuration, memory efficiency, and speed.

Release focus: Major bugfixes

Changes:
The optimization step now correctly processes parameters that are also used as local variables. The obfuscation step now avoids spurious conflicting class member names. Incremental obfuscation has been improved. The documentation and examples have been updated.

Author:
Eric Lafortune [contact developer]

Rating:	reset 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
8.84/10.00 (10 votes)

Homepage:
http://proguard.sourceforge.net/

Trove categories: [change]

[Development Status]		5 - Production/Stable
[Environment]		Console (Text Based)
[Intended Audience]		Developers
[License]		OSI Approved :: GNU General Public License (GPL)
[Operating System]		OS Independent
[Programming Language]		Java
[Topic]		Software Development :: Build Tools, Software Development :: Code Generators

Dependencies: [change]
No dependencies filed

 Branches

Branch	Version	Last release	License	URLs
Default	4.2	20-Mar-2008	GNU General Public License (GPL)

 Releases

Version	Focus	Date
4.2	Major bugfixes	20-Mar-2008 17:48
4.1	Major bugfixes	11-Dec-2007 18:36
4.0	Major feature enhancements	28-Sep-2007 18:09
3.10	Minor bugfixes	30-Aug-2007 20:52
3.9	Minor bugfixes	26-Jun-2007 21:10
3.8	Major bugfixes	02-Mar-2007 18:09
3.7	Major bugfixes	13-Dec-2006 22:21
3.6	Major bugfixes	15-May-2006 17:15
3.5	Major bugfixes	31-Jan-2006 18:52
3.4	Major bugfixes	27-Oct-2005 17:19

 Comments

[»] Good tool, but...
by SyntEvo GmbH - Aug 31st 2007 03:08:47

We use ProGuard since a couple of years and are very happy with it. It provides good obfuscation for zero price.

Unfortunately, we need to stick with version 3.6 because every new version we've tried caused our application to behave incorrectly (e.g. menus did not open) or to throw some exceptions at the application start (although we don't use reflection). The bad thing is, that finding such bugs is very hard without (major) knowledge of the byte-code internals. Sending unobfuscated application code over the internet is also not a good choice.

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[»] All problems fixed with version 4.0.1
by SyntEvo GmbH - Oct 15th 2007 01:03:52


> Unfortunately, we need to stick with

> version 3.6 because every new version

> we've tried caused our application to

> behave incorrectly (e.g. menus did not

> open) or to throw some exceptions at the

> application start (although we don't use

> reflection).

With version 4.0.1 all these problems are fixed. Thanks, Eric, for the excellent work!

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[»] It works for me...thanks!
by johngunther - Jul 6th 2007 19:02:10

This package shrunk my jar to 1/3 its size, eliminated unused methods and gave the rest names like a, b, c, etc. Just what I needed. Best of all, thanks to the wizardly GUI builder, I was able to do this in practically zero time.

I like the way the GUI builder is a transparently clean front-end for the underlying ant script (which is quite readable), and how well the various defaults were chosen. There's great documentation, too.

Even if you don't need an obfuscation tool, the code shrinkage and method elimination gives your Java applications many of the advantages associated with languages like C.

Have only used it on a small application so far, but I very much liked what I saw...Thanks for creating what I expect will be an important addition to my Java toolkit going forward.

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