How to protect Julia code from being read by users?

Question

Can Julia code be protected so that end users cannot read the code? I'm looking at this as alternative to Python which I know is difficult to protect.

I'm looking for a language which can be used to create end user desktop apps, which is strong in terms of statistics / mathematical applications, and Julia seems perfect for this.

Answer 1

There are two separate things you would need for such a scenario:

1. compile your code in an executable and ship the compiled code
2. "obfuscate" the code so that it becomes difficult to reverse engineer it

Honestly I don't think Julia is the most suited language for this task at this time:

(1) is possible with the PackageCompiler.jl package. It isn't however mainstream, don't expect a click and solve your problem solution. For (2) I am not aware of software tools that obfuscate Julia source code, although you can still "decide" to write pretty cryptographic, spaghetti code in Julia if you wish!