When I got started in iOS dev, debugging in Xcode seemed like a pain. I used to get exec_bad_access issues & crashes at random points that took me ages to figure out the reasons behind.
I then stumbled upon Brad Larson's videos on debugging in Xcode and my life has never been the same. He showed how you could dynamically set a break point & get your app to break every time an exception was thrown. This allowed me to actually see the stack trace & figure out what was wrong in a jiffy. It made life a lot easier.
To the experienced developers out there, are there any more random tidbits such as this that you find useful?
SO itself is a nice resource:
Hidden Features of Xcode
How to print out the method name and line number and conditionally disable NSLog?
Memory leak detection tools
Related
I have run my app with instrument and i m getting a memory leak but i dont know at which point that memory leak is happening.
How will i know at which point memory is leaking.
Check out this article "Actually finding a memory management error with Instruments", from the big nerd ranch. Creating "heapshots" is a good way to start narrowing down the code parts that show no obvious memory management errors at first glance. But as ACB stated already, if a system library is leaking (rare case) there's not much you can do about it. But most of the time the memory issue is always in your apps' code somewhere! :-)
It says responsible library is quartzcore, and it is only 16 bytes. As long as it is not in the app and the OS is causing the same, you cant do much about this. I would recommend you to ignore this.
If you are facing issues, check the allocation tool -> Live bytes section and check if memory is shooting up when you are selecting a lot of images at the same time.
I can see from your screenshot that your app is already running in your device/simulator and you are trying to run it again with instrument, try to close your app completely from device and then start it again with instrument.
You can read more details about Xcode instrument from Apple.developer InstrumentsUserGuide
Also I have found another good tutorial about this in Raywenderlich blog
Another good documents is here
I am new here . Sorry if I this question is being repeated but I have a slightly different issue than the others.
My app crashes randomly after certain amount of time interval without any error logs or stack trace. I suspect it's an memory issue . I have the following questions :
1.) How to get stack trace (I have tried NSZombie enabled and NSUnacughtExcpetion handler) but didn't worked
2.) I get Memory warning frequently in my app. How do I confirm whether it's the prime suspect for the above issue? (I have used Leaks, my app crashes when it has just 4Mb usage so I am not quite sure whether memory leak is causing it my app to crash. I know certain application which take heap memory more than 4MB .)
3.) What is the upper limit for Memory leak for an application in iOS before app crashes ?
4.) Would ARC help me in this situation ?
Also, I have tried to debug issue using NSLog statements but since it crashes randomly , it would be hard for me to detect the root cause using this technique.
Any ideas would be or help would be really appreciated
My app crashes randomly after certain amount of time interval without any error logs or stack trace. I suspect it's an memory issue.
To confirm that it's a memory issue, sync your device with iTunes,and look in ~/Library/Logs/CrashReporter/MobileDevice/ for a files with LowMemory in their name. If you see (jettisoned) next to your app name, that confirms it was killed by iOS for using too much memory.
The only other way an app could exit without leaving a crash report is if it erroneously called exit().
For more information, see "Debugging Deployed iOS Apps", and "Understanding and Analyzing iOS Application Crash Reports".
Not sure but reading the registers might help.
First go to Exceptions tab and 'Add Exception Breakpoint' using the + at the bottom left corner.
Then when the app crashes click on "0 objc_exception_throw" under Thread 1
Finally in the console enter:
register read
(you should get a list of registers)
po $rax (normally the exception is in 'rax')
(you should see the exception output on the console)
Hope this helps.
That does sound like maybe the device is running low on memory and shutting you down. There's lots of threads on stackoverflow on debugging memory warnings.
This one talks a little about what to look for when using the Instruments tool.
Here is an explanation of how to get the memory warning level, and what the codes mean.
There is no fixed memory limit on iPhones. I've asked Apple support representatives this question, and they wouldn't give me a fixed answer (probably because the algorithm does not actually enforce any one hard limit for a 3rd-party app).
And, yes, ARC can be a wonderful thing. In your situation, you might have to rework a lot of code to make it all ARC-compliant, but ARC is definitely a useful feature, and can produce programs with fewer memory problems, with less work by the coders (leaving you more time to fix other problems!)
I recommend instrument
https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/developertools/conceptual/InstrumentsUserGuide/AboutTracing/AboutTracing.html
In my case i closed all other apps and it started working normally, maybe it was a memory issue
i made an iPhone app that uses camera. It works fine in iPhone, no memory warnings at all. It is also running on iPod touch 4G but gives memory warnings and crashes after some time after getting level 2 warning.
If someone can point me the possible reason for this. Thanks.
The only way you are going to fix this is by being able to debug it on the device. I wrote this blog to explain how to debug EXC_BAD_ACCESS, which is what I assume you are getting
http://loufranco.com/blog/files/Understanding-EXC_BAD_ACCESS.html
The simplest things to do:
Run a Build and Analyze and fix every problem it finds (or at least rewrite it so that B&A doesn't think it's a problem) -- Having a clean B&A is a really good way to making sure you catch these problems early
Turn on Zombies and run your program -- this makes the last release sent to an object turn it into a zombie rather than dealloc it. Your program will leak tons of memory, but if you ever send a message to a zombie it will stop right there and you will see a bug that you need to fix, because in your real version, that would be a crash (sending a message to a dealloced object).
More techniques described at the link
It crashes on a specific operation or randomly?
if randomly,
use instrument to check your memory leaks and memory usage. It's hard to figure out where the problem lies in without going through all your app.
Currently I'm testing an app that I've written with ios 4. I've spent a good bit of time looking for memory leaks and that side of things seems o.k.
I have a problem where the app seems to "randomly" quit after going from one view to another. Sometimes this will happen after a minute or 2 and sometimes it won't happen at all. Because of this it's really very difficult to determine where the flaw in my application is and under what circumstances because my observations of whats going on is subjective. Also it can get very annoying very quickly sitting there hitting buttons until something happens and then trying to remember the sequence of your actions.
What would be a good method to hunt down the cause of this seemingly randomly occurring problem?
For example,
I remember speaking with QA engineer before and he spoke of tools that he used to automate a user using an application. He'd leave it running over night and then in the morning he could examine what combination of user actions and under what circumstances a problem occurred.
Are there such tools available for testing iphone applications? Ideally what I'd like to see is a report of
action a
action b
action c
= everything ok.
action a
action c
action b
= there was a problem.
There's also fonemonkey: http://www.gorillalogic.com/fonemonkey
As for random crashes... I am tester, not developer, and random crashes are usually one of the topics I examine more thoroughly on every iphone app. My favorite scenarios are: leave the phone for 2 min, for 10 min, and switch apps (on iOS 4). In all cases it's better to use a real phone (and the older the better), not a simulator (some crashes never happen on simulator). Commonly nested views are affected (e.g. get to some view, let phone sleep, click "Back" button to return to previous view - crash). Usually developers say that incorrect retain / release, autorelease while another object holds pointer, and other memory issues are to blame. Also Device Logs (which will have crash report) usually can pinpoint problem pretty accurately.
Hey.
Instruments by Apple. Apple reference.
Instruments has its limitations and drawbacks, but just try it. It may be confusing at the begging so try to follow tutorial, or some other.
Check out running the app with zombies enabled. Also, instruments in Xcode is very helpful.
I have built my first game using Cocos2D. It worked fine on the simulator. But when it runs on the actual iPhone, it crashes. I don know why. Thought it was memory leaks, so i tried to detect, but no leaks found. I tried to increase and decrease frame rate, neither both succeeded. Anyone experienced please help me out. I am really stressed now. If anyone had the same issue please share with me your opinion.
Yours thanksfully.
I've run into similar issues (I also use Cocos, but I don't think this is Cocos specific). The best thing to do is plug-in your iPhone and watch the stacktrace when it crashes (or retrieve the stacktrace after the fact)
This happened to me a lot because the resources between the iPhone and the simulator were not in sync; in other words, some how resources would be available to the simulator (eg: images) but those same resources were not transferred to the iPhone for whatever reason. Sometimes, if I ran 'clean' on the simulator, I would observe the same issue.
It's extremely frustrating to debug these types of issues, but you'll get used to it.
I agree with Dominic - we definitely need more information to be able to help you - do you have the output from the console or the stack from the debugger?
Also, while memory leaks are a Bad Thing, they rarely lead to crashes directly. They will increase the amount of memory used by your app so if you're memory intensive then you might get a problem but they're not the first place I'd look to try to debug this.
Try running the app in Instruments and watch the memory usage graph - then not only can you see the total that your app is using but you can get an idea of which sections of your app use the most and can focus your efforts in reducing it.
Sam
Sorry, but you need to specify more details. How does it crash? What does the error log say? One thing you might look into is the amount of memory, your game consumes. If it uses more than 64 MB on the actual device, the OS will very likely just terminate it. In the simulator on the other hand, your app might use lots more memory without a problem.
I have found tools like Instruments and NSZombieEnabled to be very helpful in tracking down issues such as these.
Without more information, I would try the following steps:
Delete the app from the device and simulator (using the tap-and-hold technique to make your icons jiggle) and reinstall it. Sometimes a setting (or lack of a setting) in the user defaults will cause a crash, and those don't get wiped out unless you delete and re-run your app.
Also try the "simulate memory warning" option in the simulator and see if that gets it to crash.