Java 5 to Java 1.4 Source Code Backporting Tool

Question

Is there a tool that, given a Java 5 level source code, will backport it to Java 1.4-compliant source code, by removing Generics declarations, transforming for eachs in simple fors or iteration fors, etc.?

Please note that I am looking for a tool that translates source code to source code, not class binaries.

Answer 1

You are looking for Retroweaver, it sounds like.

Answer 2

Similar question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/547872/converting-java-1-5-source-into-1-1-source/547923#547923

Essentially run retroweaver over your code and then run that through a decompiler... not sure of any source-to-source translators.

Answer 3

The previous post on a similar subject works on class files. I have not heard of a tool which does the same for source files.

You can, however, develop and compile in Java 5 and deploy on a Java 4 runtime with retroweavor or retrotranslator.

If you must convert java 5 to 4, the easiest way to do it, as far as I see, is by setting your IDE java version to 1.4 and fix all errors.

In eclipse, for instance, you can set a per-project java version by right-clicking on the project, select Properties, select Java Compiler and set the Compiler compliance level. It may be smart to use the Java 1.4 JRE system library instead of the 1.5 JRE (Java Build Path, Libraries).

Answer 4

Declawer should do what you want. There's some brief info about it here, but basically what it does is run through a directory of Java 1.5 source and output Java 1.4 equivalent source. It doesn't support all 1.5 features. For example, the enhanced for loop and auto(un)boxing aren't there. It will strip out generics though, and that should get you a substantial portion of the way there. The source it generates is a little funky, but not too bad. It's built on top of javac, it basically just tells it to spit out the AST as Java source instead of bytecode.

Hope that helps.

Answer 5

We have been using retrotranslator in our project and it has been working absolutley fine. You can find it here Retrotranslator @ Sourceforge

Answer 6

RetroJ does the waving at Source Level.. it is commercial though

Answer 7

We have written our own tool "Decaf" to port back db4o from current Java dialects all the way back to JDK 1.1.

Decaf is based on the Eclipse compiler.

It can deal with constructs like generics, for loops and varargs.

Sources for Decaf can be found in our SVN repository: http://source.db4o.com/db4o/trunk/decaf/