[HN Gopher] Ask HN: How does JetBrains protect their IDE Java so...
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Ask HN: How does JetBrains protect their IDE Java source code?
On linux, after I installed goland, I could see a lot of .jar file
and .class file inside. I don't know, I can see all of the source
code ?
Author : yi_xuan
Score : 11 points
Date : 2024-12-22 16:04 UTC (6 hours ago)
| Tomte wrote:
| Most of it is Open Source and on GitHub, anyway. So you shouldn't
| be surprised to see source code.
|
| The Community edition lacks certain features, though.
| yi_xuan wrote:
| Goland has no community version :)
| Tomte wrote:
| Oh right, I always assume that JetBrains has the same
| strategy across its tools. Happened not for the first time.
| Thanks for reminding me!
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I remember go being a plugin to intellij idea. Now it's
| not. Sadly. I wonder how they got over with this plugin
| having been opensource
| Tmpod wrote:
| As far as I'm aware, all their IDEs are based on IDEA, almost
| acting as IDEA+special plugin, so a _lot_ of code will still
| be the same. Of course, the language-specific stuff is not
| open, but as others have said, Java bytecode is fairly easily
| decompiled anyway.
| thesuperbigfrog wrote:
| .jar files are just specially packaged .zip files for
| distributing Java programs and libraries.
|
| .class files are Java bytecode.
|
| What source code files are you seeing?
|
| What are the filenames, etc.?
|
| JetBrains's IDE source code would likely be Kotlin (.kt, .kts
| file extension) or Java (.java file extension) source code files.
| not_your_vase wrote:
| You mean that you have opened the class file, and saw the actual
| source code? Class file is supposed to be object-code (or
| whatever java calls that) - which can be decompiled (and
| sometimes even in a meaningful way), but generally it is not
| supposed to be the source itself...
|
| (I just downloaded goland, and extracted a random jar file, and
| at least with that, the above paragraph seems to stand)
| IshKebab wrote:
| They probably use an obfuscator. Standard practice for Java which
| is otherwise relatively easy to decompile.
|
| Or they may not bother, because what are you going to do with
| that source code anyway? You don't need it to pirate the IDE,
| there's no secret sauce in there, and you obviously can't use it
| to make a competitor. There would be very little value in
| obtaining the code.
| nulld3v wrote:
| Nothing. No obfuscation either really. Heavy obfuscation could
| hurt performance, and light obfuscation can break reflection that
| might be used by plugins.
|
| There isn't much value in trying to protect their source code.
| IDEs are evolving rapidly in response to languages, any
| decompilation you prepare would be outdated immediately. And
| nearly all JVM programs can be trivially cracked anyways, even if
| heavily obfuscated/guarded.
| rickette wrote:
| They protect their source code by releasing awesome products that
| developers happily pay for (I do).
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(page generated 2024-12-22 23:02 UTC)