Adobe AIR Development

[UberschallSamsara]

Since updating to the November drop, debug builds hang at the splash screen on Dev Alpha.

Per the release notes, under Known Issues:

"AIR debugger may not display the host IP dialog when launching a debug session. This may cause applications to hang at the splash screen and fail to launch. (240219, 242986)"

A workaround is given for folks running Flash Builder, where you explicitly give the debug host IP address instead

of relying on auto discovery.  I use the commandline flow (don't have Flash Builder), and my debug builds that used to work on the September drop now hang at the splash screen. I have added -debugHost 169.254.0.2 to my blackberry-airpackager command and the debug builds still hang.  Release builds signed with my debug token launch normally, as they did before updating to the November drop.

For folks who are using Flash Builder and who know how to look under the hood and find the blackberry-airpackager command that it dispatches when you do a debug build:  for debug builds that launch successfully

on a Dev Alpha with the November update, can you please post the blackberry-airpackager commandline that

Flash Builder is executing?

[UberschallSamsara]

Ok so far it looks like in Beta 4, you don't get a dialog asking to either provide a debug host IP address or continue running w/out connecting a debugger.  If you indeed are required to connect to a debugger and use it to come out of the entry point halt on any debug build, this is bad IMO.  I would prefer to have just one build on device at a time, and be able to do both user centric UX evaluation with the phone on the go (i.e. not connected to my dev computer), as well as debugger based testing and evaluation.  Prior to Beta 4, debug builds launched when the phone was not connected to a debugger would ask if you wanted to enter the debug host IP or just skip debugging.  RIM, if this was an oversight, please reverse it, and if it was deliberate, please explain the expected use cases & how the new behavior supports them.

[UberschallSamsara]

Ok it looks like the release notes page has been updated to state that the new behavior is a bug fix:

Fixed issues

240219, 242986

Running AIR app in debug mode displays the host IP dialog when launching a debug session.

For the reasons I stated previously, I consider the new behavior to be a bug, unless there is some

new way to have a debug build living on my device that I can start and run it without being

required to connect to a debugger in order to even make it past the splash screen.

RIM I am hoping you will not tell me that I need to deploy a separate release build in order to do UX

testing.  It will be too easy for release and debug binaries to get out of sync vs. source code updates.

[UberschallSamsara]

Are we still in open support hours for AIR for this Friday?  Can someone from RIM please address the issues I've asked about in this thread?  Thanks!

[dmalik]

You bet. Sorry for not getting to this. Yes this is a bug and is addressed in the gold release coming out next week. From my experience it works like it used to. I don't build using the command line (usually use Flash Builder) but will raise this with the SDK team.

Regards,
Dustin

[dmalik · Accepted solution]

Got a response from them and they have confirmed that the dialog will be back. We will make this a part of our test cases in the future.

Cheers,

Dustin

[UberschallSamsara]

Thanks, Dustin.  BTW is there a mapping from the issue numbers in the SDK release notes to the JIRA system?  I tried a few obvious search strings for this issue in JIRA but couldn't find anything that looked like the description in the "Fixed issues" section of the SDK release notes.

[dmalik]

There are a lot of bugs that are tracked internally that don't make it onto the JIRA system. The one we use internally and JIRA are actually 2 different systems but they do tie in together but its usually JIRA -> internal system. In JIRA we can reference internal bugs but have to create the bug again in JIRA. That would be why you wouldn't have seen it.