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Re: Mixing native and bytecode (Swing)?


On Mon, 6 Oct 2003, John Moore wrote:
> I am wanting to distribute a cross-platform Swing-based application,
> elements of which I do not want to be reverse engineered, decompiled.
> Obfuscation only goes a certain part of the way, and the prospect of
> compiling to native code using GCJ struck me as rather exciting when I
> found out about it.

That's somewhat less exciting to free software advocates like myself, but
yes, it's arguably an advantage and legitimate use of gcj.

> Now, I appreciate that the Swing libraries have not been replicated yet,
> but I'm hoping that does not mean a dead end for my plans. What I am
> wondering is whether it is possible to compile into a native code library
> the part of the application I don't want reverse-engineered and run the
> whole thing with GIJ, with the Swing part being interpreted as bytecode.

While in theory you could run an unbundled swing with gcj, it's going to
depend on java.awt support that isn't really mature yet.  And I'm not sure
that Sun's license would permit use of swing separate from the JRE.

You see, gcj and the JRE are really separate products and don't
interoperate whatsoever.  So there are probably technical hurdles and
perhaps licensing also.

(Others have had success distributing projects compiled with SWT, which
has nothing in common with Swing or AWT.)

Jeff


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