Getting Debug Trace

From PluginWiki

General

The procedure's a little different on Windows and Macs, so these are discussed separately.

In general what you need to do is:

• Turn debug on (see below).
• Load the page that was giving unexpected behaviour - the trace makes a note of what is going wrong.
• Then find the debug file and send it to Edward.  Send it off-list - the plugin group strips attachments.  If you have trouble mailing it, then upload it to the Files section of the group.

Please compress it, if possible, because I get a lot of them and it fills up my Inbox. For instructions on a free Windows compression tool, see Using 7-zip. For Mac OS X Leopard, try PackUpAndGo.

A warning about debug trace

• Don't run with it on all the time - it's a lot slower.
• It runs until you turn it off manually - it doesn't turn itself off.
• It appends to the same file - so running with it on for a long time would tend to fill up your disk. You might want to delete the file periodically (Firefox must be shut down to do this).

The Taskbar icon shows red while you're debugging, so you don't forget about it. If it's turned on when you restart Firefox, it'll warn you about it.

Windows users

You do this:

• Turn debug on - right click on the Taskbar icon (the little blue tile on the bar at the bottom of your browser) and click on the Debug option. Before you click on it, it won't have a tick (check) next to it, because it's not debugging.

• Once you've clicked on it, it'll put a little tick (check) next to it, to show that it's debugging.
• Then reproduce your problem (e.g. by reloading the page that's showing it). If this is the very first time you've collected Debug trace, you'll be asked for a place to store the debug. You'll need to get the debug from here to send it to Edward, so put it somewhere simple (e.g c:\debug.txt).
• Now turn debug off in a similar way to how you turned it on, by clicking on the Debug option.

• Once you've turned it off, the tick (check) will disappear.

You can also configure this by clicking on the Debug Options button on the Features tab.  You can turn debug on or off here, and you can configure the locations of:

• the debug file
• the Java Console Output; this is a different type of debug you might be asked for sometimes, and needs to be a different location from the debug file.

You either type the file location in manually, or click on the Set Location button to set it up.

Apple Mac OS X users

From the File menu in Firefox:

• go to Tools->Add-Ons
• click the prefs of the ModPlugin (previously known as freecycleedinburgh) add-on
• Configure the debug file from the Features tab of the plugin's preferences main window by enter ing the following filepath into the empty field next to Generate debug trace?

/Users/youruseraccountname/Desktop/debug.txt

• Tick the Generate debug trace? box.

youruseraccountname here is the what you see next to the 'house' icon in any new finder window - i.e. the name of the user of the computer as entered in system prefs, or the one you see at the login window when your mac is started up.

This means a file named debug.txt will be created on the desktop. If you want this file to be tucked away out of sight, in say documents then substitute Documents for Desktop.

Once you have set it up as above, next time you can switch it on and off by pressing Ctrl and clicking the blue tile icon, then selecting Start Debugging, and off by selecting Stop Debugging.