In an old document from Apple(Debugging An Authorization Plug-In With Xcode), a method was taught to debug plugins on the device remotely, but I can't find this feature in the new Xcode version. Does it exist In the new Xcodes?
Does it exist In the new Xcodes?
No.
There’s currently no supported way to remotely debug a macOS program using Xcode [1]. This is an oft-requested feature and, while a lot of underlying infrastructure for this has been added in recent versions of Xcode, it’s not packaged as something we can use (r. 58890752)-:
In this specific situation I typically debug by logging into the machine over SSH and running the lldb command-line tool directly. This isn’t ideal, but it’s not as bad as it sounds because of the way I approach such problems.
Debugging authorisation plug-ins would be a hassle even if you could do it with Xcode. You still have to install the plug-in, log out, and log in, and all of that takes time. So, it’s best to avoid this sort of debugging if possible. I do that in two different ways:
I structure my code to avoid debugging. This means good unit testing.
For interactive stuff, I have a small testbed app that hosts my plug-in. That way I can debug that rather than debugging interactive stuff in situ.
That means I typically only need to fire up LLDB when I’m debugging integration problems, and the command-line LLDB is actually pretty good for that task.
Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
[1] There are unsupported techniques for this but DevForums isn’t the right place to learn about those (-:
Does it exist In the new Xcodes?
No.
There’s currently no supported way to remotely debug a macOS program using Xcode [1]. This is an oft-requested feature and, while a lot of underlying infrastructure for this has been added in recent versions of Xcode, it’s not packaged as something we can use (r. 58890752)-:
In this specific situation I typically debug by logging into the machine over SSH and running the lldb command-line tool directly. This isn’t ideal, but it’s not as bad as it sounds because of the way I approach such problems.
Debugging authorisation plug-ins would be a hassle even if you could do it with Xcode. You still have to install the plug-in, log out, and log in, and all of that takes time. So, it’s best to avoid this sort of debugging if possible. I do that in two different ways:
I structure my code to avoid debugging. This means good unit testing.
For interactive stuff, I have a small testbed app that hosts my plug-in. That way I can debug that rather than debugging interactive stuff in situ.
That means I typically only need to fire up LLDB when I’m debugging integration problems, and the command-line LLDB is actually pretty good for that task.
Share and Enjoy
—
Quinn “The Eskimo!” @ Developer Technical Support @ Apple
let myEmail = "eskimo" + "1" + "@" + "apple.com"
[1] There are unsupported techniques for this but DevForums isn’t the right place to learn about those (-:
