1<?xml version="1.0"?> 2<!-- 3 * Licensed to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) under one 4 * or more contributor license agreements. See the NOTICE file 5 * distributed with this work for additional information 6 * regarding copyright ownership. The ASF licenses this file 7 * to you under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the 8 * "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance 9 * with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at 10 * 11 * http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0 12 * 13 * Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, 14 * software distributed under the License is distributed on an 15 * "AS IS" BASIS, WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY 16 * KIND, either express or implied. See the License for the 17 * specific language governing permissions and limitations 18 * under the License. 19--> 20 21<document> 22 <properties> 23 <title>Home</title> 24 <author email="dev@commons.apache.org">Commons Documentation Team</author> 25 </properties> 26 <body> 27 28 <section name="Commons BCEL"> 29 <p> 30 The Byte Code Engineering Library (Apache Commons BCEL™) is intended to give users a 31 convenient way to analyze, create, and manipulate (binary) 32 Java class files (those ending with .class). Classes are 33 represented by objects which contain all the symbolic information 34 of the given class: methods, fields and byte code instructions, in 35 particular. 36 </p> 37 38 <p> 39 Such objects can be read from an existing file, be transformed 40 by a program (e.g. a class loader at run-time) and written to a file again. 41 An even more interesting application is the creation of classes from scratch 42 at run-time. The Byte Code Engineering Library (BCEL) may be also useful 43 if you want to learn about the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) and the format of 44 Java .class files. 45 </p> 46 47 <p> 48 BCEL contains a byte code verifier named JustIce, which usually 49 gives you much better information about what's wrong with your 50 code than the standard JVM message. 51 </p> 52 53 <p> 54 BCEL is already being used successfully in several projects such 55 as compilers, optimizers, obsfuscators, code generators 56 and analysis tools. Unfortunately there hasn't been much development 57 going on over the past few years. Feel free to help out or you 58 might want to have a look into the ASM project at objectweb. 59 </p> 60 </section> 61 62 <section name="Documentation"> 63 <p> 64 The package descriptions in the <a href="javadocs/api-release/index.html">JavaDoc</a> give an overview of the available features 65 and various <a href="project-reports.html">project reports</a> are provided. 66 </p> 67 <p> 68 The JavaDoc API documents are available online: 69 </p> 70 <ul> 71 <li>The <a href="apidocs/index.html">current stable release</a></li> 72 </ul> 73 <p> 74 The <a href="source-repository.html">svn repository</a> can be 75 <a href="http://svn.apache.org/viewvc/commons/proper/bcel/trunk">browsed</a>, or you can browse/contribute via <a href="https://github.com/apache/commons-bcel">GitHub</a>. 76 </p> 77 </section> 78 <!-- ================================================== --> 79 <section name="Release Information"> 80 <p>The latest stable release of BCEL is 6.1. You may: </p> 81 <ul> 82 <li>Download <a href="https://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-bcel/download_bcel.cgi">6.1</a></li> 83 <li>Read the <a href="https://www.apache.org/dist/commons/bcel/RELEASE-NOTES.txt">6.1 release notes</a></li> 84 <li>Inspect the <a href="bcel5-bcel6-clirr-report.html">extended Clirr report</a> comparing 5.2 with 6.0</li> 85 </ul> 86 <p> 87 Alternatively you can pull it from the central Maven repositories: 88 <pre> 89<dependency> 90 <groupId>org.apache.bcel</groupId> 91 <artifactId>bcel</artifactId> 92 <version>6.1</version> 93</dependency> 94 </pre> 95 </p> 96 97 </section> 98 <!-- ================================================== --> 99 <section name="Getting Involved"> 100 <p> 101 The <a href="mail-lists.html">commons developer mailing list</a> is the main channel of communication for contributors. Please remember that the lists are shared between all commons components, so prefix your email by [bcel]. </p> 102 <p>You can also visit the #apache-commons IRC channel on irc.freenode.net or peruse <a href="issue-tracking.html">JIRA</a>.</p> 103 <p>Alternatively you can go through the <em>Needs Work</em> tags in the <a href="taglist.html">TagList report</a>.</p> 104 <p>If you'd like to offer up pull requests via GitHub rather than applying patches to JIRA, we have a <a href="https://github.com/apache/commons-bcel/">GitHub mirror</a>. </p> 105 </section> 106 </body> 107</document> 108