Re: Questions about how the GWT obfuscation process works

GWT first optimizes the Java AST, then converts it into a JavaScript AST and optimizes it as well.

I had a sneaking suspicion the obfuscation might not be working off human-readable JS. Neat.

 

Once that is done the actual obfuscation is just a simple renaming as far as I know.

Ah, right.

 

Its also kind of worthless doing such a compression as you have mentioned because that is exactly what GZIP compression does when activated on your web server.

I was wondering whether it made that much of a difference with gzip configured. As Thomas Broyer noted, GWT reorganizes the code so it fits better into gzip's sliding window and gets compressed more readily.

As an aside, I recently learned just how much gzip makes a difference: http://jvns.ca/blog/2013/10/24/day-16-gzip-plus-poetry-equals-awesome/

 

The obfuscation is not a standalone tool so you can not run it against any JS library.

Duly noted.

 

In the future it is likely that GWT use a different compiler called J2CL (in development inside Google) which takes the Java code and directly converts it to ES6 JavaScript classes in a way that they are really good understandable by Google Closure Compiler.

Interesting! Thanks for the headsup!

 

Then JS optimization + minification will be done by Google Closure Compiler which you can of course use for any JS library as well.

I just had a look at the Closure Compiler web service and fed it some JS I was recently golfing. To quote, it "Saved -68.96% off the gzipped size (-107.55% without gzip)", although in all fairness it did give me some possible ideas for saving a few bytes.

 

So the minification/obfuscation you are seeing today in GWT will likely change in the future.

 I see. I'll keep an eye out for the changes! :)

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