How to access protected methods inside sorted packages?

[Jamezo97]

tldr: How do I either turn off class sorting while forge is being installed, or how do I get around the inability to access protected methods and fields?

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Hey guys,

I'm the author of the 'MyPeople Mod', and am currently trying to convert my mod over to Forge.

 

I was originally using Risugami's Modloader, but many dislike Risguami's Modloader and Forge is used by many now, and I can do much more with Forge.

 

So I installed forge fine, opened up eclipse, created a new package, and then imported my source code. I fixed as many errors that I could, where fields were just renamed and such, or package declarations were now different. So that went well too.

 

However I then looked in the error list, and almost 75% of all the errors I now have to fix, are accessor errors.

 

For example, in my mod the clone try's to make mob's attack it (like a mob would attack a player), so to do that, I check to see whether the entity is using the new AI system, with the method: "protected boolean isAIEnabled()"

 

However, because my class is inside a different package than the 'net.minecraft.entity' package, I can't access that method because it is set to 'protected', and to access it I need to be in the same package.

 

Most of my errors are all because of the protected keyword. With Risugami's Modloader, it doesn't sort the classes into packages, so I just place all my code into the main package of 'net.minecraft.src' and because it's in the same package as 'EntityLiving', it can run the method fine.

 

So, my question is:

How do I either turn off class sorting while forge is being installed, or how do I get around this?

 

Thankyou! If you need any more information please just ask.

[mnn]

as reflection always gives a performance hit.

I thought so as well, but under some circumstances there's virtually no cost at all. Method invoking via reflection according to this http://stackoverflow.com/a/414823/1017211 has the same cost as calling it directly. I don't know about fields, but it could be optimized too. (This all is true probably only if the object from reflection is cached.)

[Chibill]

It deobfuscates at runtime now so that's not a problem

[Jamezo97]

I can think of 3 ways right away:

• Make your mod a coremod and use Access Transformers
  
• Use Java reflection
  
• Make a utility class inside the package you need access to which only contains methods like this:
  

public static void accessRandomMethod(RandomType instance) {
    instance.randomMethod();
}

I'd go for method 1 or 3 as reflection always gives a performance hit.

Ah, yes well I looked at the first option, and that looks, complicated

The second option, I had thought of that, but that requires updating all the method names every time minecraft updates

And the third otpion, I thought of that also, but when the mod is compiled, the class would just be wasted space because it's all put back into one package.

 

So I think i'll just go with the second option, it's only going to take up an extra few bytes worth of class files, so I think it's the best way to go.

Thankyou!

[LexManos]

Everything is turned to public at runtime because of the runtime deobfusication, so your best, and easiest bet is to use a custom decompile time access transformer config. However, I would be weary, as 90% of the time, if you're trying to access a private or protected function there are better ways to do it. However it seems you did find a case where it should be publicized. I welcome the PR for it.