debugging an app startup with android maven plugin

Question

I'm working with the latest version of android maven plugin. I use android:deploy and android:run to launch my app on my device. When I want to debug, I go into DDMS in eclipse and check the green bug icon for my app. Everything works fine... but I can only debug a running app, ie it has already started. If I put a breakpoint in my application constructor or onCreate, it wont stop (obviously because the application has started and the debugging didn't been activated... yet).

So my question is: how can I start my app in debug mode directly from maven like I would do for an app that I start from eclipse ?

thanks ahead

Have you confirmed your Eclipse settings with the suggestions made in the documentation (http://code.google.com/p/maven-android-plugin/wiki/Debug)? — Sri Sankaran, Dec 30 '11 at 12:09
Yes Sir! It's what I describing in the first part of my question. It runs just fine like in the documentation. But not at startup! — Gomoku7, Jan 15 '12 at 22:22

score 4 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 09 '12 at 18:58

Thanks to Lukasz, I found the command in Idea that is launched to trigger the debug mode. Basically, the application is deployed with android:deploy but instead of android:run, I launch a shell "am" command with -D. Here's the usage for anyone interested.

ovh-ybi$ adb shell
# am
usage: am [subcommand] [options]

start an Activity: am start [-D] <INTENT>
    -D: enable debugging

send a broadcast Intent: am broadcast <INTENT>

start an Instrumentation: am instrument [flags] <COMPONENT>
    -r: print raw results (otherwise decode REPORT_KEY_STREAMRESULT)
    -e <NAME> <VALUE>: set argument <NAME> to <VALUE>
    -p <FILE>: write profiling data to <FILE>
    -w: wait for instrumentation to finish before returning

start profiling: am profile <PROCESS> start <FILE>
stop profiling: am profile <PROCESS> stop

<INTENT> specifications include these flags:
    [-a <ACTION>] [-d <DATA_URI>] [-t <MIME_TYPE>]
    [-c <CATEGORY> [-c <CATEGORY>] ...]
    [-e|--es <EXTRA_KEY> <EXTRA_STRING_VALUE> ...]
    [--ez <EXTRA_KEY> <EXTRA_BOOLEAN_VALUE> ...]
    [-e|--ei <EXTRA_KEY> <EXTRA_INT_VALUE> ...]
    [-n <COMPONENT>] [-f <FLAGS>] [<URI>]

score -1 · Answer 2 · answered Jan 21 '12 at 08:46

-1

Instead of android:deploy and android:run you could just launch your application in debug by eclipse and not by maven. You have to have your project configured properly to do this.

answered Jan 21 '12 at 08:46

Łukasz Klich

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Thanks for the answer. This is a bit difficult to achieve because Maven and Eclipse don't see the same things. I spent an hour tring that. It means also loosing the dependency system of maven and transforms the management of libs in something awful in eclipse. Main issue : eclipse try to insert a libs with javax into the apk... and dalvik dosnt like that. Why does eclipse do that ? dont know? Where? dont know either.. – Gomoku7 Feb 02 '12 at 10:03
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I'm using Idea instead of Eclipse. Maybe you could try this? Our project in Eclipse constantly broken. Because of that I had to play with my device who's faster: me in clicking the debug in ddms or it in starting the app. In Idea everything is all right most of the time. I can start app in debug mode from Idea – Łukasz Klich Feb 09 '12 at 12:46
I installed Idea just to try it and it give me the information I was looking for. Thanks Lukasz. See answer below. – Gomoku7 Feb 09 '12 at 18:53

score -1 · Answer 3 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

-1

You can deploy and start it using this post. To debug I guess and hope you only need to change some parameters.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:52

Community

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answered Jan 31 '12 at 21:34

Karussell

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That's interesting, thanks. But I didnt find any way to activate debugging. There's no parameters that do that in the documentation. – Gomoku7 Feb 02 '12 at 10:10
But here is the docu. I think you'll need to specify a port and attach the debugger to it http://code.google.com/p/maven-android-plugin/wiki/Debug – Karussell Feb 03 '12 at 20:26
Well... that's currently how I'm doing things. If you read carrefully, you'll see that the app is launched (point 2) and only AFTER the debugging is started (point 5). What I want is when the application is launched, the debugging has started at the same time. – Gomoku7 Feb 05 '12 at 10:05
Sorry for wasting your time. I would attach the debugger before I start the real debug process and set the timeout high enough (at least in Netbeans there is an option for this). Also you could introduce a sleep before the critical breakpoint or just use eclipse or use a different activity which starts an intent of the actual activity or what ever. be creative :) ! – Karussell Feb 05 '12 at 15:23
No no! your ideas are more than welcome and thanks for yours comments! There's in fact a lot of solutions possibles to debug in the application onCreate or in the application constructor, but it's always tricks (loggers can do the job perfectly). I was just wondering if there was some normal way of initializing the debugging before it even started in a console manner. How is eclipse doing ? – Gomoku7 Feb 06 '12 at 16:56
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I just added a comment the the referenced post, but thought it would be a good idea to add it here too. You can use -Dandroid.run.debug=true to activate debugging when the app starts. – Tom Bollwitt Oct 24 '12 at 21:18

debugging an app startup with android maven plugin

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