Question

When obfuscating .class files annotations are removed. Is there a way to obfuscate these files(files containing annotations) without removing them. Is there a way to obfuscate non compiled .java files to preserve annotations, if it’s possible?

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How does java compiler treat annotations and where are they preserved? why after obfuscation all the annotations are removed. Can’t I, after obfuscating the classes, bring back the annotations and put them back in their place in order to work?

Answer 1

I asked and researched on annotations and obfuscation and I’ve found the following:

1. Annotations are kept in the meta section of the class byte-code
   and it’s very hard to manipulate them. Obfuscation programs don’t deal with such classes
2. I have tried a lot of obfuscators – commercial and opensource
   ones, but neither of them could obfuscate annotated classes that have
   all of their fields and methods annotated
3. The only way left that I could think of is to use xml configured
   files instead of annotations