Re: Obfuscation - optimisation?

[Clemens Eisserer <linuxhippy at web dot de>]

Hi there!

> I just tried creating some manual obfuscation of some dummy classes. I 
> made a class with a long (50 chars) class-name, long (100 chars) 
> field-name and long (130 chars) method name. A similar obfuscated 
> class was created with one character long names. Next, I created 10000 
> instances of both (and kept references to all of them), and saw that 
> they consumed the exact same amount of memory...
> This was of course a small test, but I think it's conclusive that 
> obfuscation on names does _not_ reduce memory footprint.
> Maybe it was obvious?! :o)

Well, this is really true - Method instances do not include the name of 
there classes - I think they only store something like a descriptor or a 
pointer where the class-information can be looked up in a hashtable or 
something like this.

But proguard does things like removing unsused stuff VERY efficient or 
making methods that are never orverridden final. removes code withought 
side-effects....
Well, for libraries this is stupid, but for applets or stand-alone apps 
this IS indeed very helpful. It makes programs much smaller (-20-40%) 
and also faster.

Of course this could also done all in gcj itself (and to be honest I 
dont know whats currently done) but till its there proguard is a way to 
enhance your applikation with next to null work.

Btw. I was not able to build "optimized" code with gcj, though proguard 
claims to create valid bytecode (and warns of options that doesnt).

lg Clemens