Specifications

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CHAPTER 12
This topic describes how to use the fdb command-line debugger. To use the Flex Builder debugger, see “Running
and Debugging Applications” on page 136 in Using Adobe Flex Builder 3.To use either debugger, you must install
and configure the debugger version of Flash Player. To determine if you are running the debugger version or the
standard version of Flash Player, open any Flex application in the player and right-click the mouse button. If you
see the Show Redraw Regions option, you are running the debugger version of Flash Player. For more information
about the debugger version of Flash Player, and how to detect which player you are running, see “Using the
debugger version of Flash Player” on page 228.
Using the command-line debugger
The fdb command-line debugger is located in the flex_install_dir/bin directory. To start fdb, open a command
prompt, change to that directory, and enter fdb.
For a description of available commands, use the following command:
(fdb) help
For an overview of the fdb debugger, use the following command:
(fdb) tutorial
Generating debug SWF files
To debug a Flex application, you first generate a debug SWF file. Debug SWF files are similar to other application
SWF files except that they contain debugging-specific information that the debugger and the debugger version of
Flash Player use during debugging sessions. Debug SWF files are larger than non-debug SWF files, so generate
them only when you are going to debug with them.
To generate the debug SWF file using the mxmlc command-line compiler, you set the
debug option to true, either
on the command line or in the flex-config.xml file. The following example sets the
debug option to true on the
command line:
mxmlc -debug=true myApp.mxml
Flex Builder generates debug SWF files by default in the project’s /bin-debug directory. To generate a non-debug
SWF file in Flex Builder, you use the Export Release Build feature. This generates a non-debug SWF file in the
project’s /bin-release directory. You can also manually set the
debug compiler option to false in the Additional
Compiler Arguments field of the project’s properties.
To generate the debug SWF file using the web-tier compiler with the Flex module for Apache and IIS, you can
either set the
debug compiler option to true or append debug=true on the query string:
http://www.yourdomain.com/MyApp.mxml?debug=true
For more information, see “Invoking the debugger compiler” on page 350.