Java News from Monday, October 1, 2007

Eric Lafortune has released ProGuard 4.0, an open source Java "class file shrinker, optimizer, and obfuscator. It can detect and remove unused classes, fields, methods, and attributes. It can then optimize bytecode and remove unused instructions. Finally, it can rename the remaining classes, fields, and methods using short meaningless names. The resulting jars are smaller and harder to reverse-engineer." Version 4.0 introduces pre-verification for Java Micro Edition and Java 6 and performs additional bytecode optimization. Proguard is published under the GPL.


Luc Maisonobe has released Mantissa 7.1, "a collection of various mathematical tools aimed towards for simulation. It is not a complete mathematical library like GSL, NAG or IMSL, but it contains various algorithms useful for dynamics simulation and 3D geometry computation." Its algorithms include:

Version 7.1 improves support for ordinary differential equations.