ASMifier class missing from ASM 3.3.1

Question

According to the ASM FAQ, to get example ASM code, I should use the ASMifier class, like this:

java -classpath "asm.jar;asm-util.jar" org.objectweb.asm.util.ASMifier org/domain/package/YourClass.class

But that gets me the error:

Error: Could not find or load main class org.objectweb.asm.util.ASMifier

Looking at JAR files, the ASMifier class seems to be missing, though its helper classes are present:

./org/objectweb/asm/util/ASMifierClassVisitor.class
./org/objectweb/asm/util/ASMifierAnnotationVisitor.class
./org/objectweb/asm/util/ASMifierMethodVisitor.class
./org/objectweb/asm/util/ASMifierAbstractVisitor.class
./org/objectweb/asm/util/ASMifierFieldVisitor.class

This is with ASM 3.3.1, as provided by Fedora 20. Is the FAQ for a newer version, and I should be using different instructions? Did Fedora mess up the packaging (even though their bug-tracker shows nothing)? Something else?

Answer 1

When browsing the SVN repository of ASM, you can read up the revision history of the ASMifier: It was formerly known as the ASMifierClassVisitor which was also this utility's name in version 3.1.1.

ASM never had a reputation of maintaining binary or even compilation compatibility. Thus, you might encounter several problems like the one you describe when using non-bleeding edge versions of the library. (The authors promised to improve this after ASM's version four.) You, or the libraries that you use, should however always repackage ASM into a different namespace in order to avoid such issues. This is even recommended in the FAQ to using ASM.

For running your example, you would have to use:

java -classpath "asm.jar;asm-util.jar" \
    org.objectweb.asm.util.ASMifierClassVisitor \
    org/domain/package/YourClass.class