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I've followed the instructions at the link below to "Build and simulate a Cordova iOS app in the cloud". https://taco.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/build_ios_cloud/

After completing the instructions I'm able to build and get the iOS simulator working, however, I'm unable to attach a debugger.

The message displayed in remotebuild is:

GET /cordova/build/5655/debug 500 10.865 ms - 28

In Visual Studio I see the following in the Debug window:

Starting launch process C:\Program Files (x86)\nodejs\node.exe "(redacted)\node_modules\vs-tac\emulator.js" --platform ios --action launch --path "(redacted)\buildInfo.json" --serverUrl https://(redacted):3000/cordova --certificateName (redacted) --language en-US --loglevel info  --cliVersion 5.4.1 --npmInstallDir "(redacted)"  --deployTarget "iPhone 5"
Timed out connecting debugger to remote Apache Cordova app. See Output window for JavaScript console output.
------ Cordova tools 5.4.1 already installed.
Requesting emulate on iOS Simulator for buildNumber 5655 on server https://(redacted):3000/cordova...
Emulated - Successfully sent to ios Simulator
------ Cordova tools 5.4.1 already installed.
Requesting debug on remote iOS device for buildNumber 5655 on server https://(redacted):3000/cordova...
Failed to Debug iOS remote for build (redacted)\buildInfo.json to https://(redacted):3000/cordova :
iPhone 5

My local development machine is using Visual Studio 2015 and Cordova 5.4.1. I have Node v0.12.2 installed locally and v0.12.9 installed on the MacInCloud. Following the instructions in the link above, I am NOT an admin on the Mac machine.

I've also already tried the instructions suggested in this SO answer: Visual Studio Debugger failing to connect to remote Apache Cordova app in iOS simulator

Community
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Jacob
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  • Here's another recent post with some steps you could try: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35208495/tools-for-apache-cordova-visual-studio-2015-fails-to-launch-app-in-ios-simulator – Jordan Matthiesen Feb 10 '16 at 21:28
  • Thanks for the suggestion. I followed the instructions to the letter but the error message is the same. – Jacob Feb 10 '16 at 22:30
  • Hi, Jacob - I work on the Tools for Apache Cordova team at Microsoft. Right now, we're investigating ways to make it easier for developers to recover from remote build errors in VS. I’m hoping to chat with folks like you who have encountered issues with remote build and reached out to the community for troubleshooting. Customer feedback is the number one way we make product design decisions, so I’d love it if you could make time for a 20min phone call this week or next to talk about how you understand and overcome build issues. jomatthi [at] Microsoft [dot] com – Jordan Matthiesen May 09 '16 at 20:34

2 Answers2

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All the suggestions and the links provided by others were helpful but ultimately my assessment of the problem was not being admin/root on the Mac. The Visual Studio Cordova docs linked in my original question would suggest that you can do all that you need on a Mac without having admin/root access but in my experience that is just not the case.

To the credit of the MacInCloud group, they were very helpful in making changes that I requested to permissions and for reinstalling packages such as brew, ios-webkit-debug-proxy, remotebuild, etc... but after a while that back-and-forth kind of approach to fixing the issue proved painful. When I switched from a Managed MacInCloud server to a Dedicated one, everything worked almost immediately.

Looking back I think the initial execution of remotebuild, which executes brew -- without being admin on the box -- caused the whole process to go south. I was warned when I ran remotebuild for the first time that it would install some brew components that might need root access. That should have been a warning sign to me that not being admin on the box was going to be an issue...

Even though I was able to get a Dedicated MacInCloud server working, the lesson I learned about having control over the Mac prompted me to just buy a Mac Mini. That was a little more difficult to setup because I was now doing everything myself, but ultimately I think it will pay off in the end.

For anyone else struggling with similar issues here is a brain dump of some things I learned along the way:

  1. You don't necessarily need to get Visual Studio talking to the Mac to debug Cordova applications. You can use Safari Web Inspector from the Mac. https://blog.nraboy.com/2015/10/debugging-your-apache-cordova-ios-app-with-safari/. Even though I finally got VS working, I actually prefer this because it is more like Chrome's debugger which I prefer to Visual Studio's.
  2. The ios-webkit-debug-proxy NPM package mentioned in other comments and links is basically a proxy which Visual Studio uses to debug the simulator in exactly the same way Safari does as mentioned above. For this proxy to work you must also be allowed to connect to the Mac over ports 9221-9322. https://github.com/google/ios-webkit-debug-proxy. Prior to learning that I thought I only needed port 3000 open for the remotebuild proxy...
  3. The package necessary for launching the iOS simulator from remotebuild is ios-sim and it will occasionally timeout when launching the simulator and cause the debugger not to attach. This is a known limitation. https://github.com/phonegap/ios-sim and https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/visualstudio/2014/11/13/tools-for-apache-cordova-update-ios-debugging-windows-8-1-support/ (see comments).
  4. If you should feel the need to install/uninstall brew it is very easy to do. Just run the install script and if already installed it will give you instructions on how to uninstall. http://brew.sh/ and https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/master/share/doc/homebrew/Troubleshooting.md#troubleshooting. To uninstall or reinstall a NPM package is equally easy and Google is your friend.
  5. Read and re-read both of these links for setting up a Mac: https://taco.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/ios-guide/ and https://taco.visualstudio.com/en-us/docs/build_ios_cloud/. Getting the RemoteBuild.config right is crucial for getting secure connections to work -- especially if you want to access your Mac Mini at home from across the internet.
  6. If you are remoting to a Mac I highly recommend iRAPP or some other VNC alternative. My experience has been that VNC is painfully slow and having a bad connection when you're troubleshooting issues just leads to more aggravation. http://www.coderebel.com/products/irapp/
  7. As mentioned above, the MacInCloud guys were great when I asked for support, but if you do need root access for more than six months the cost of a Mac Mini is less than a Dedicated server plan.

Cheers

Jacob
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2

Since it is the call to /cordova/[...]/debug that is failing it looks like you might not have ios_webkit_debug_proxy installed. You could try making sure that homebrew is installed (from http://brew.sh) and running brew install ios-webkit-debug-proxy. Afterwards you should be able to run ios_webkit_debug_proxy without an error.

If that runs successfully then you should be able to quit out of ios_webkit_debug_proxy and debugging should work via remotebuild.

Laguana
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