JAPICC 2.4

Java API Compliance Checker (JAPICC) — a tool for checking backward binary and source-level compatibility of a Java library API.

Contents

1. About
2. Install
3. Usage
4. Test suite

About

The tool checks classes declarations of old and new versions and analyzes changes that may break compatibility: removed methods, removed class fields, added abstract methods, etc. The tool is intended for developers of software libraries and Linux maintainers who are interested in ensuring backward compatibility.

The Scala language is supported since 1.7 version of the tool.

Java 9 is supported since 2.4 version of the tool.

The tool is a core of the Java API Tracker project: https://abi-laboratory.pro/java/tracker/

Install

sudo make install prefix=/usr

Requires

• JDK or OpenJDK - development files
• Perl 5

Usage

japi-compliance-checker OLD.jar NEW.jar

Java 9

japi-compliance-checker OLD.jmod NEW.jmod

Create API dumps

japi-compliance-checker -dump LIB.jar -dump-path ./API.dump
japi-compliance-checker API-0.dump API-1.dump

Adv. usage

For advanced usage, see doc/index.html or output of -help option.

Test suite

The tool is tested properly in the Java API Tracker project, by the community and by the internal test suite:

japi-compliance-checker -test

There are about 100 basic tests in the test suite.