hugo VS android-buddy

If you've ever used libraries like https://github.com/JakeWharton/hugo or https://hibernate.org/ (if you've ever done some backend development) and wondered how do they seem to add some code/logic into your app just by adding some annotation to some method, or if you ever wondered how mocking frameworks like Mockito can change a class behavior for example, then most likely you're interested in a programming technique that allows to modify existing code, usually known as Aspect oriented programming (also known in Java as Bytecode instrumentation) which, even though it might sound intimidating at first, some really cool tools such as Byte Buddy or AspectJ make it quite easy to accomplish.

I should elaborate that it worked amazing as a utility, however I could not for the life of me make it work as a library, it had to be its own module in the codebase. Jake Wharton actually had something similar working with Hugo, although less feature-filled, but I couldn't get mine to work like his, whatever magic he used to make it work as a library. So after realizing the hassle of bringing it into each project and configuring it just wasn't worth it.

That's what happened to me when I tried to write some bytecode transformations using Byte Buddy. I noticed that they wouldn't work for Android right away, and instead, some sort of adapter is needed in order to make the connection between these bytecode transforming tools and the Android compilation so that said transformations happen at compile time. Sadly for me, such compilation adapter didn't exist for Byte Buddy and Android, which is why I took the time to create one: Android Buddy.