Quick start

1. 1

   Open the web UI

   Run the jar with no arguments. It opens your browser to the settings page.

   bash

   java -jar flowguard.jar

2. 2

   Pick your input file

   Point Input at the jar you want to protect. Leave Output on its default — it writes the result next to your input file with -pbco added to the name, and backs up anything it would overwrite.

3. 3

   Turn on a sensible starting set

   For a first run, turn on: renaming, string protection (Standard), removing debug info, and the general clean-up pass. Leave native protection and class sealing off for now — they take more setup and are covered in their own pages.

4. 4

   Run it

   Click run (or save your settings and use the CLI — see below). Flowguard works through your classes and writes the protected jar.

5. 5

   Test the result

   Run the protected jar the same way you'd run the original, and make sure it behaves the same. If anything breaks, turn protections back on one at a time to find which one caused it — see Settings reference for what each one changes.

Running from the command line#

Once you've saved settings from the web UI, you can repeat the same run from a script:

java -cp flowguard.jar dev.pbco.Start --input path/to/app.jar

The CLI doesn't take flags for individual protections — it always uses your last saved settings. That's what makes it script-friendly: configure once in the UI, then run the same configuration repeatedly or in CI. See Command line for the full flag list.