Proposal: App Inventor Debug Mode

[Kumaraswamy]

Sometimes apps get really big and it makes harder to debug the problem, the runtime errors in application does not include much info.

here is a small project im working on that adds a "debug mode" to the application.

So whenever the mode is enabled, it makes it a little easier to debug and locate problems.
it can be enabled / disabled just like debug mode in android studio.

For example, in the above procedure, the "procedureAddNames" causes errors.
and it can be traced easily through the debug feature:

so in large apps, it would be very beneficial ,

It would print all the traces where the error has occurred (procedure names), it would be also possible to add support for events, etc

So I would like to hear your thoughts about it and how it can be better.

[Peter]

That looks great. So to see the errors you have to use adb? It is not possible to get the info in a kind of read-only terminal at the bottom of the block editor for instance? It could be a setting to hide or show that terminal.

[Kumaraswamy]

@Peter

So to see the errors you have to use adb?

the traces are written to the logs, but yes we can improve it.

@Peter

It is not possible to get the info in a kind of read-only terminal at the bottom of the block editor for instance?

That is a great idea, I had a similar plan but I do not have idea about appinventor graphical interface (how it works)

[Kevinkun]

here is UI of wxbit, it has a debug panel, it can hold all the do it output, any error message.
Click the error message, will high light the block which cause this error.

[Kumaraswamy]

Wow, that is a great thing, never knew about it
Maybe we can do something similar, like displaying the output directly to the do-it result.

[ChrisWard]

vknow360 did have a LogReader extension but it seems to have disappeared.

[Taifun]

@ChrisWard

LogReader extension

It is here

I can't show images from the internal storage in the app

The extension needs read and write permissions. Also note that android 10 does not allow you to write in external storage. Since the extension uses absolute path method so you should pass a complete path. @ChrisWard I have something for you: com.sunny.LogReader.aix (5.5 KB) Actually it does almost nothing and same can be done using android terminal.

taken from the extensions directory App Inventor Extensions | Pura Vida Apps

Taifun

[Kumaraswamy]

@ChrisWard

vknow360 did have a LogReader extension but it seems to have disappeared.

It is actually quite different, you are limited to only track normal errors, errors caused by appinventor blocks cannot be traced.

[DBriner]

Here is a method that I use for debugging. I miss having an output console for debugging, so I sort of made one using a multiline text box and a couple console procedures. I can plug in a call to one of these procedures and see what is going on with some variable or other.