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"Select debug app" and "Wait for debugger" are new feature in Jelly Bean, does someone know how to use these new features?

Alexander Farber
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gladman
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2 Answers2

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I found the answer here: http://developer.android.com/tools/debugging/debugging-devtools.html

Lets you select the application to debug. You do not need to set this to attach a debugger, but setting this value has two effects:

  • It will prevent Android from throwing an error if you pause on a breakpoint for a long time while debugging.
  • It will enable you to select the Wait for Debugger option to pause application startup until your debugger attaches (described next).
Brent
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2

It is a mystery to me also, but I'll share my experience. I cannot see that these options change the phone's behavior. Regardless of the settings I choose, the Galaxy Nexus behaves like my older phones that do not have the settings.

"Waiting for debugger" is a dialog that I see whenever I start running an app from Eclipse. It stays up for a while, and then my app starts running. This has been the case since I started Android development, and it still works that way on my old and new devices, regardless of the setting.

If I click on "Select Debug App", it allows me to select an app from the already installed apps on my phone that allow debugging, which are the apps that I wrote myself.

On my Galaxy Nexus it does not matter whether I select "Nothing" or one of my debuggable apps, I can still debug any app from Eclipse. I cannot even see a difference in time it takes to load an app over the ADB connection.

gabriel
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