working chromebug / firebug / XULRunner combination

[kja]

I am developing an XULRunner application which is strictly a client
browser application, (necessary to meet a client contract
requirement). Success requires me to get Chromebug/Firebug and/or
FBTrace, or some other debug environment operational. I am flexible
with respect to which XULRunner I use (5.0 or greater). I am currently
using 5.0.

I have seen some indication that FF5.0 is compatible with FB 1.7 / CB
1.7 (see ==>
http://groups.google.com/group/firebug/browse_thread/thread/c7b7d1964ac5c635/26016744e712538c?lnk=gst&q=firebug+chromebug#26016744e712538c
).

I am willing to expend the time to confirm a working environment,
however I would prefer to start my efforts with a last-known working
environment, if one such environment can be confirmed and if a single
page of installation theory can be pointed to.

Is anyone currently or recently using CB/FB with XULRunner? If so,
what versions?

[Sebo]

Note, as it was stated in the other thread Chromebug is not working with newer versions of Firebug than 1.7. So you will need to use FBTrace instead. Also there is also no maintenance for older versions of Firebug than 1.9 anymore. Currently we're working on Firebug 1.10.

The XULRunner tips will help you to enable extensions support. If you decide to stay with Firebug 1.7 (which I do not recommend), you will need to adjust the toolkit maxVersion to 5.* inside the install.rdf first.
Though I never tried that. So there's no guarantee that it works.
If you can't get Firebug to work, you may at least be able to get DOM Inspector running.

Sebastian

[Ben]

I've been working on a FF extension for quite a while now and have been relying on the FF 5, Firebug 1.72 + Chromebug 1.72 environment to have a robust debug environment for my extension. I of course understand these are old versions that are bound to break at some point. I have read the XULRunner tips you link to below and I'm sure I 100% understand what is possible with the current set of releases.

FBTrace seems to be more of a console output - which though helpful, is not entirely what I'm looking for. 

Do you know if there is a combination of tools such that I could debug my extension (step-through javascript code, examine the Chrome DOM, HTML, etc) with the current Firebug in the way that ChromeBug used to do? 

I apologize if there is an answer I should know already - I'm just having trouble getting a clear picture. 

I haven't yet installed the latest Firebug (maybe it does all this natively? ) for fear of breaking my brittle dev environment : )

Thanks again for an awesome tool. 

Best, 

Ben 

[Sebastian Zartner]

Hi Ben,

sorry for the late reply.

FBTrace seems to be more of a console output - which though helpful, is not entirely what I'm looking for.

Do you know if there is a combination of tools such that I could debug my extension (step-through javascript code, examine the Chrome DOM, HTML, etc) with the current Firebug in the way that ChromeBug used to do? 

Unfortunately I'm not aware of any tools for Firebug which allow you to step-debug chrome sources. This is exactly what Chromebug was meant for.
Though I found another source of information for you: A description of how to debug a XULRunner app. As mentioned before for examining the DOM the easiest way will be to use DOM Inspector. You can though try to get Firebug working, which should allow you to inspect the DOM as well.

Hopefully that helps a little bit.

Sebastian

[TheRave]

Nothing can replace chromebug. Sadly the developer has left the best extension for fx in the random. So you can only use Fx5 with last working version 1.7.2 and hope that the mozilla devs drill up their new FX Javascript webpage debugger for chrome someday.

[Sebastian Zartner]

hope that the mozilla devs drill up their new FX Javascript webpage debugger for chrome someday.

At least for Firefox they already started to do that. To check that out you should install the latest nightly build of Firefox, go to about:config and enable devtools.chrome.enabled and devtools.debugger.chrome-enabled. Then open the debugger tool via Ctrl+Shift+S.
Though the debugger is still a work-in-process, I didn't really try out to debug chrome contents and I also don't know if the tools will ever be made available to other XULRunner apps.

Sebastian