Obfuscar for Xamarin Forms

Question

I'm developing a Xamarin.Forms app using Visual Studio for Mac (Community Edition). I'm able to decompile the source code of the Android application using ILSpy

In order to obfuscate the source code, I used Obfuscar and followed the steps in https://docs.obfuscar.com/tutorials/xamarin.html

• Below is the Xamarin.Android project structure

• Below is the configuration in obfuscar.xml

    <Obfuscator>
        <Var name="RenameProperties" value="true" />
        <Var name="RenameEvents" value="true" />
        <Var name="RenameFields" value="true" />
        <Var name="KeepPublicApi" value="false" />
        <Var name="HidePrivateApi" value="true" />
        <Var name="HideStrings" value="true" />
        <Var name="UseUnicodeNames" value="true" />
        <Var name="OptimizeMethods" value="true" />
        <Var name="InPath" value="./bin/Release" />
        <Var name="OutPath" value="./bin/Release/Obfuscator_Output" />
        <Module file="$(InPath)/Sample.dll" />
    </Obfuscator>

• Below changes are done in the Android.csproj

When the project is built in the Release mode, Archived, and Decompiled, the source code is still visible in plain text using ILSpy.

I need help in configuring Obfuscator correctly for the Xamarin.Forms project

Answer 1

Everything worked fine with the below Obfuscar configuration

<Obfuscator>
    <Var name="RenameProperties" value="true" />
    <Var name="RenameEvents" value="true" />
    <Var name="RenameFields" value="true" />
    <Var name="KeepPublicApi" value="false" />
    <Var name="HidePrivateApi" value="true" />
    <Var name="HideStrings" value="true" />
    <Var name="UseUnicodeNames" value="true" />
    <Var name="OptimizeMethods" value="true" />
    <Var name="InPath" value="/Users/sahil.khanna/path_to_xamarin_project/Sample.Android/bin/Release" />
    <Var name="OutPath" value="$(InPath)/Obfuscator_Output" />
    <Module file="$(InPath)/Sample.dll" />
</Obfuscator>

Strangely, InPath and OutPath worked with an absolute path instead of a relative path on a Mac. The only changes I did were in the InPath and OutPath to make it work.