Implement Ahead of Time (AOT) for Java Applications

Question

We are developing a commercial desktop-based application in Java using the Netbeans / Eclipse Rich Client Platform. The IDE (Netbeans / Eclipse) provides a good built-in installer for packaging the application. The only problem is that our end users can see jar files during deployment, and we do not have enough protection for our intellectual property, as reverse engineering is possible. Code obfuscation can be used to minimize impact, but cannot avoid it. We were looking for open source solutions / products that could help us mitigate our problem by directly converting our application into proprietary code, something similar to what AOT should do.

Thanks in advance for helping ur.

-Bhan

Answer 1

this has already been discussed here: How to create .exe for a Java program?

Answer 2

You can convert Eclipse RCP applications to a real EXE (or Linux binary) that does not contain bytecode using a product that my company produces.

In general, the AOT compiler must know the inner workings of such a dynamic structure or container, in particular class loading, otherwise the source bytecode will be needed at run time to check for consistency and possible JIT compilation. Our product only "knows" about the Eclipse RCP and Apache Tomcat class loaders at the moment (he always knew about the standard, of course.)