Tag Archives: debug

Mobile

BlackBerry Simulator – *.debug File Not Found

I encountered an interesting (and frustrating issue) with the BlackBerry simulator in Eclipse. I got an error upon starting the simulator that the *.debug file was not found with some options to search and browse for it. Looking around my system showed that indeed – no *.debug files exist. I’ve tried many things, erasing all my Simulator Files, cleaning the build, re-building and so on, to nothing helped. Eventually I ran into this forum threadin the blackberry forums discussing this specific problem. It turns out that sometime, even though there are errors in the build – no errors will be shown, making you believe the build was successful. However, this is not the case. There should be an *.err file (were the *.debug file should have been) describing a compilation error in code.

Seeing that this came from the same error mentioned in the thread – _X is not Persistable: base Class does not implement net.rim.vm.Persistable_ , it might be that this specific error has a problem displaying in Eclipse.

Programming

Debugging XAML and Prism

The biggest frustration in my Silverlight development is debugging errors in my XAML code.  Since our app uses Prism, there are often three different .xaml files involved in any one change to the app: App.xaml for global styles, Shell.xaml for the main layout and a .xaml file for whatever view I’m working on.  If something goes wrong, knowing what file it’s in is half the battle.

Unfortunately, the errors that Silverlight throws when you have malformed XAML can be pretty obtuse.  Through trial, error and a little intuition I’ve figured out that there are some patterns:

  • If nothing at all renders, the problem is likely in App.xaml.  That gets loaded first, and if something goes wrong then you get bupkus.  Check for syntax errors in App.xaml.
  • If the only thing that renders is the spinny loady thing (I actually don’t know if this is a Silverlight default or a StockTraderRI thing) then I think that usually means the problem is in Shell.xaml.  App.xaml has loaded at this point, but something is keeping the rest of it from going.  Often this can happen if you’re referencing something in App.xaml that’s syntactically valid but semantically nonsense.  Check especially for mis-spelled values inside Setter tags, or badly structured ContentTemplates. Continue reading Debugging XAML and Prism →