I'm developing an AS3 application with the commandline tools from the Flex SDK. My workflow is:
write code
compile with mxmlc
run the SWF file in favorite webbrowser
repeat
The second step catches compile-time errors, but what about run-time errors and warnings? And trace() output? How can I see that?
I'm not using any IDE with debugging capabilities.
Get the debug version of the Flash player and Firebug for Firefox, then you can see the traces and errors in the console.
When a run-time error occurs that isn't caught by an exception handler you will get a popup telling you about the error.
Why not get http://www.flashdevelop.org/? It's free and it has debugging, profiling and all other goodies you can expect from an IDE.
Although the Flash debugger is a pretty good choice. I would personally suggest Monster Debugger. It is a great debugger with a very intuitive user interface and it has a plethora of features that make debugging extremely easy.
Flash player debugger writes the output of trace() to the flashlog.txt file. Its location is hardcoded and is different on different systems. On Linux it is in ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/Logs/flashlog.txt. In order to have The debugger to actually write into that file, you need yet another file, mm.cfg, it's location and name are again hardcoded. It should be in ~/mm.cfg. It may contain many different options, but the one you are interested in is ErrorReportingEnable=1.
You may then $ tail -f ~/.macromedia/Flash_Player/Logs/flashlog.txt to see the progress as the file is been written to.
Note that the directory and the file must be writable by the user running the player. Flash player will not issue any warnings if that is not the case, and will fail silently.
Also note that if you are happened to be on Linux, then there isn't a 64-bit version of a debugger player... However, the player runs fairly well under Wine, the Windows version that is.
You may debug using commandline debugger found in SDK. it's called fdb (fdb.exe or in Apache Flex fdb.bat on Windows). It has similar to gdb interface, can do breakpoints, some runtime code evaluation, disassemble functions, look up stack frames and their variables and most of the other stuff you'd expect a debugger to do. I'm usually running it from Emacs, but I would imagine that running it from Vi[m] or whatever editor you are using shouldn't be a problem...
If you were using Emacs, it is actually possible to hook up Flymake to a part of the SDK that does syntax checking while you type. You can find more info on how to do that here: http://www.flashdevelop.org/community/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=9238 (thanks Philippe).
Related
I am at the point where I am running into incredibly long build times for my project and more projects to come. I would like to make a build server but I have not had any experience with them aside from downloading files from them as an end user.
My ideal setup is this: A GitHub where I can place my .fla file, classes and ANEs. The server sees this, compiles it, and allows me to test it remotely or hook into some debugger that lets me see stack traces and active variables at breakpoints and errors like Adobe Animate or Flash Builder.
Now I see there are GitHub plugins for Jenkins. I see there are questions referring to how to set one up with Flex/AIR. I come here with a few issues.
I am too far into my project to switch over from using Animate to something like Flash Develop or anything ADT related. The only thing I have found is how to take existing elements from my library in Animate and have them in a .swc for handling. However, this doesn't let me access existing elements in the Timeline and would rather not try to export/position/handle them in code (which is the only workaround that I see if this is not possible)
I run ANEs that are dependent on Google Play services and other Android specific libraries. Thus, I haven't been able to use the standard mobile debug launcher for AIR. I see Jenkins has some specific abilities for Android. Is it possible to somehow use this to give me a proper window for testing? I am thinking that I would need to run their emulator after compiling everything but I am unsure if there is a more efficient method or if it would even work.
I have never worked with Jenkins before or any other tools capable of automating tasks. Any step by step explanations is appreciated if you have the time.
I could use some help getting my #AS3 / #AIR application running on #iOS !
Right now I have a .SWF (v11) that I'm converting to an .IPA using Adobe AIR (v3.7) on Windows (7).
If I do the conversion with the -target of ipa-test-interpreter it works great.
If I do the conversion with ipa-test, ipa-debug, ipa-ad-hoc, or ipa-appstore, the application seems to compile fine but upon execution of the app on my iPad it just shows a black screen.
Connecting my iPad to a desktop and monitoring console output, I see not crash or error messages generated; the app appears to behave fine internally, it's just lost all external output.
This means I can test and develop but I won't ever actually be able to deploy to the app-store. Anyone else run into this?
Googling around I've run into other people encountering this problem, but no solutions yet. One thing I tried was removing all native extensions, and I also tried removing the -C compiler directive. No luck on either.
To be clear, the app runs totally fine on Mac, PC, Android, Browser, and on iOS in interpreter mode; it's just native-compilation on iOS that's broken. I've heard rumours that ipa-test and ipa-interpreter have different memory allocation routines, but I don't know enough about the low-end here to figure this out.
The remote debugger (in FlashDevelop) doesn't seem to connect either. I think it's failing before the runtime fires fully, somehow? I'm also watching the console output using the iphone-configuration-utility and there isn't anything abnormal showing up.
Temporary file link with sample project and instructions: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1348446/test.zip
Figured it out. Rundown:
The ADT command line has a -C flag to change the current working directory on the command line, which allows you to keep your project better organized and keep the command line a bit more sane. -C can be called as many times as you want when importing assets, and I used it several times. IDEs like FlashDevelop also use -C in the AIR template files so this is sorta standard behaviour. As a quick example of asset inclusion:
ADT.exe [blah blah] assets/icons/icon1.png assets/icons/icon2.png
is the same as
ADT.exe [blah blah] -C assets/icons icon1.png icon2.png
(and, with wildcard use) is the same as
ADT.exe [blah blah] -C assets/icons .
As I have different compiling instruction sets for iOS, android, steam, etc., I had adt switch directories with a variable to the current config and execute from there.
This all works fine and as-documented in ipa-test-interpreter mode. When in native-code mode (ipa-test), however, including the main executable .SWF after a -C command [somehow for some reason] messes up the internal pathing; the file ends up being included but ends up being all "file not found" internally when executed, hence the blank screen and no code executing.
So the fix is simply to include the .swf from the current directory, before any calls to -C. As a quick example of my workaround that just tested a-okay:
copy /bin/flash/game.swf ./
adt [stuff] game.swf -c assets/icons .
del game.swf
I've gotten in touch with Adobe about this and hopefully they'll fix -C so it's functionality is the same for both compile targets in the future.
I have seen this happen in the past due to utilization of components "restricted" from use within iOS builds of Air apps. Specifically back in the day before being able to sandbox the loading of app resources with the loader class.
Start shutting down and turning off whole modules of your app and see when the app will build and run on iOS. I'm willing to bet there is some code somewhere that is ipa-test-interpreter safe but has odd behavior under ipa-test
I see you're still stuck with this issue. If you can find a Mac to test on, I bet xcode instruments will show you're exceeding you're memory limits. It is the iPad one right? Are you using flash's embed meta tags?
Is Black your swf background color? If it is, maybe it's a cross domain loading issue because you're loading your swf and app.xml from 2 different places. I don't know if this is causing it, but I usually keep them in the same place.
Have you ever seen your provision & p.12 work on a device? If not, it might be a problem with them.
What IDE are you using to make this, Flash IDE or Flash Builder, Flash Develop/ANT? And if you post src code it would help. Sometimes putting your metadata in the wrong place can screw things up on iOS but look fine in the browser...so it could be many things.
Good luck.
I am developing a Flash game. It has a complex loading scheme which could go wrong at many different places.
When I am testing from Authoring Tool, either with "Test Movie" or "Debug Movie", it always succeeds and starts fine.
However, every time I test it by loading it in a browser, it always fails! I am not sure where to look.
The question is this : is there an easy way to direct all internal errors to a TextField on Stage where I can really check what went wrong? Alternatively, is there any other way to catch and show errors when testing on a browser?
Debug player is a must. It allows you use breakpoints and view your application state (like values of variables and so on) at runtime (if you are using an IDE with a debugger, like Flash Builder ofc). Viewing traces in console window is quite annoying, though, so you can use some external debug utility, for example Monster Debugger. It has some nice features, like highlighting MovieClips (and other DisplayObjects) at runtime.
You can use UncaughtErrorEvent to intercept all internal uncaught errors of a swf through a method.
The best way is to install the debug flash player. There is no way that I know of to direct internal errors anywhere. Apparently there is, see other answer. It's still probably easier to install the debug player however.
You can get the debug player from http://www.adobe.com/support/flashplayer/downloads.html (scroll down a bit).
As for the error itself, there are two common reasons:
If the files are hosted elsewhere, you need a crossdomain file set up
The base url of the flash file is not where you think it is, and thus any relative paths fail to resolve correctly.
I'm trying to port a C++ utility program that I want to be run from the Android ADB shell.
For that, I'm using the Android NDK's make-standalone-toolchain.sh script, and compiling my program with it.
Unfortunately, when I try to run it, I get this error:
reloc_library[1315]: 16304 cannot locate '_ZNKSs5c_strEv'...
CANNOT LINK EXECUTABLE
After some research, I saw that this means that the c_str function doesn't exist in libstdc++.so in the NDK. I also couldn't find the symbol in stlport.so either, and actually only found it in the ./sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/libs/ version of the C++ libraries. These libraries are not included in the standalone toolchain I made, and I also couldn't find them on the device (the device is running Honeycomb).
The text in the NDK clearly states that there's support for the entire STL when I use stlport. Is this something that is only true in Ice Cream Sandwich? The libstlport.so or in libsupc++.so on the device and in the NDK didn't have any signature like the one that wasn't found.
So my question has two parts:
Is there something I'm missing in the build process/Android setup? Can I set up things differently so that the program will compile without needing the gnu-libstc++, or at least fail with a compilation/link error instead of failing to load on the device?
If linking with gnu-libstc++ is the only way, how can I do that? I think I can manage statically link to it but I'd rather not.
How can I add the gnu-libstdc++ version to my
If someone else is looking for a solution, I ended up adding a dependency using the -l switch on libgnustl_shared.so. You can find it inside the NDK at
sources/cxx-stl/gnu-libstdc++/libs/<architecture>/
I then pushed this .so together with the program to the device, and made a script that adds the current directory to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. It seems similar to what the NDK does when you use the make scripts to create a program that depends on gnustl.
I've got an AS3 project where I'm trying to compile in several images, a soundtrack, and a video via [Embed] metadata. It's a product requirement that these be embedded, so network transfer is not an option.
I'm getting some really strange behavior - a sort of intermittent corruption of the compiled-in data. Sometimes after the project compiles, I run the swf and it closes immediately and writes "Warning: Failed to parse corrupt data" to the flash log. If I delete the binary and clean the project, sometimes it'll run fine after building it again. Sometimes it doesn't.
This is probably the strangest part about this problem, but sometimes when I see that error, I can physically move the video [Embed] lines to the end of the file, then clean the project, and it will build and run no problem. Sometimes I move them back to the beginning of the file and it builds and runs fine.
It kinda seems like it might be a bug in the compiler. Has anyone else experienced something similar? I'm targeting Flash 10.1 and using sprout (http://projectsprouts.org) to build my project. This is the mxmlc line that's being used to compile (mxmlc Version 4.1.0 build 16076):
mxmlc -as3 -static-link-runtime-shared-libraries=true -debug -default-background-color=#ffffff -default-size 712 400 -output=bin/ProjectName.swf -source-path+=.preprocessed/src -source-path+=.preprocessed/assets .preprocessed/src/ProjectName.as
I've tried both removing the -debug compiler option and adding the -optimize option, but no luck.
Everything is being ran through the GNU C preprocessor for some other tasks, so maybe I'll try removing the preprocessor stuff and hardcoding those variables...I'll try that and post the results tomorrow.
Any insight at all would be much appreciated. Thanks!
EDIT:
This project is going to be compiled dynamically with different assets being embedded into the same codebase, so switching to something like Flash Builder for compilation really isn't an option...it must be done via command-line mxmlc.
UPDATE:
Turns out the corrupted data message was due to images created with Photoshop's "Save for web" feature. If I save them outright as PNG images I don't get the message. However, the intermittent nature of the movie compiling properly still seems to be an issue. Now sometimes when the project is compiled it won't throw any compiler errors, but I get a blank flash player window. Right clicking in flash player shows a context menu with a message that says "Movie not loaded..." This doesn't appear to have anything to do with things being ran through CPP first.
[Screenshot]
This is apparently a bug in mxmlc under Mac OS X. After posting this, I observed some other really strange behavior, so I switched the whole codebase to Windows 7. Everything works as expected there (still using Project Sprouts as a build tool).
Flash builder is fine with it.
Can you separate your issue for video or music only, or issue is true for both includes?