I am trying to debug a quicklook plugin in Xcode 4.6. I have created the executable in Edit Scheme.
Now, when I build the project the plugin is not installed to the "/Library/Quicklook" path.
Rather I didn't find it anywhere.
I want to run the plugin in debug mode and want to hit the breakpoints so that I can figure out where the plugin crashes on different files.
You can use brake points and NSLog function for debugging QL plugin. But first you need to configure environment.
Select your project on Project Navigator
Then select QL plugin target
Go to 'Build Phases' tab and add new phase 'Copy files'
Select 'Absolute Path' on destination drop down menu and set ~/Library/QuickLook as subpath
Open terminal and copy qlmanage to your project's root directory with command cp /usr/bin/qlmanage PROJECT_ROOT_DIR
Then select menu Product -> Scheme -> Edit Scheme...
Select 'Run' on schemes list
On info tab select executable drop down menu, then 'Other...' and select qlmanage binary you have copied to project's root directory
On arguments tab add row for 'Arguments Passed On Launch' and set value to -p FULL_PATH_TO_FILE_FOR_PREVIEW
After all steps you can run your project and debug your code.
Xcode 6 must be different somehow, because the instructions above didn't work for me. But here's a solution that I puzzled out today and that works. Hopefuly it will help someone else.
(Assume the name of your plugin is myplugin.qlgenerator)
First of all, if you tried the earlier solutions above, undo them.
Delete the Copy Phase that copies your binary to ~/Library/Quicklook and delete the copy of qlmanage you may have copied to your project's root.
Set the Executable to /usr/bin/qlmanage. "qlmanage" is the program that will load and run your plugin.
Edit your scheme.
Choose 'Run' from the list on the left, then the Info tab of the display on the right.
Choose 'Other...' from the Executable popup. A standard file sheet will appear.
Type cmd-shift-g. A 'Go to folder' sheet appears with a text field.
Enter /usr/bin/ and hit the Go button. The standard file sheet should now be showing the contents of /usr/bin.
Select the 'qlmanage' binary
Turn on the 'Debug executable' checkbox and click the Choose button.
Configure the Arguments Xcode passes to qlmanage
Select the Arguments tab in the Run section of the Edit Schemes sheet.
Remove any arguments that may be left over from previous attempts.
Add -c public.data as the first argument to be passed on launch. You may need to change this depending on the kind of UTIs your plugin supports.
Add -g $(BUILD_DIR)/Debug/myplugin.qlgenerator as the second argument. This resolves to a path to the debug version of your plugin.
Add -p '/fullpath/to/file/to/be/quicklooked as the third argument. This is a path to a file that should already exist. Your plugin will be asked to render previews of this file.
Close the Schemes sheet.
That's it. You should now be able to debug your pluging including setting (and hitting) breakpoints!
I've written this blog post describing how to debug Quick Look plugins which should work as of Xcode 8.2 / macOS 10.12.
Giving due credit, this is basically the steps given here by mlist0987 but with an extra step to get around the System Integrity Protection introduced in 10.11.
TLDR: you have to take a copy of the version of qlmanage, referenced by the link in /usr/bin (i.e. don't just copy the alias) and set that as the debugging executable.
Related
I'm fairly new to OSX development. I'm currently writing an app which has its own (cross-platform) custom XML-based file type.
I want to write a quick look plugin so that things look good in the finder, and have found the tutorial on how this is supposed to work, but apparently I must be doing something wrong since I see in /var/log/system.log that I get a segfault when my Quick Look plugin is ran. I'd like to see where it's crashing, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to do that.
Where does OSX store core dumps (if it even does that)? Do I need to set some system option or something to enable that?
How do I get Xcode to look at these core dumps?
I'm lost.
EDIT SIP prevents you from debugging protected processes. Because of that, it is currently (at least since SIP was introduced, through Mojave) impossible to debug QuickLook plugins without turning off SIP, at least partially.
As you've probably discovered, since your QuickLook plugin is a plug-in instead of a standalone executable, you need to debug the process that hosts the plugin. To do that, you can hook yourself to the qlmanage executable.
The first step is to make your .qlgenerator plugin available to the Quick Look server. To do that, you need to copy it to ~/Library/QuickLook and run qlmanage -r. The first can be implemented as a post-build action, the second has to be specified in the debug options.
For the post-build action, you should follow these steps:
hit Alt+Cmd+R to open the run configuration window;
unfold the "Build" tab on the left and go to post-actions;
click the plus at the bottom of the window and select "New Run Script Action", and use the following code.
absolutely ensure the "Provide build settings from" is set to your QuickLook extension target.
rm -Rf "~/Library/QuickLook/$FULL_PRODUCT_NAME"
cp -R "$BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR/$FULL_PRODUCT_NAME" ~/Library/QuickLook
qlmanage -r
Then, you need to configure Xcode to launch qlmanage:
in the same window, go to the "Run" tab, and select "Info";
in the executable drop-down menu, pick "Other...";
hit Shift+Cmd+G to enter a path, put in "/usr/bin/qlmanage", and select that file;
check "Debug executable" if it isn't already;
move to the "Arguments" tab, add a "-p" argument, and then add arguments as you see fit for the files that you need to preview.
Now, when you use the Run action, you'll be able to debug your plugin through qlmanage.
I haven't tried this personally, but this page:
Debugging Quicklook Plugin in Xcode 4.6
has a description of how to debug your plugin in Xcode 4 - 6. That will probably be much more useful than trying to grub through the core file after the fact.
I would like to debug Firefox code on OS X.
I'm reading from this page and it tells me:
Now you need to add the executable. Select Project > New Custom
Executable and type a pretty name, then click the Choose button to
locate the .app file that you want to debug (Mozilla.app, Firefox.app,
DeerParkDebug.app etc). The .app file is
But with xcode 4 there is no Projects menu. I can't seem to find out how to add a custom executable. I have successfully built Firefox but I just can't debug it because I don't know how to add an executable in Xcode 4. I suspect the steps in the link were for Xcode 3.
Under Xcode 4 you will have to edit a scheme to run an executable. Select a scheme (or duplicate one for your target) then select the "Run" phase. You will see an "Executable" pop-up menu, select which executable you wish to use then run your target. There are other settings for specifying the arguments, etc just as in Xcode 3.
Is there an easy way of getting Three20 v1.1 to work under xCode 4?
I followed the steps on http://three20.info/article/2011-03-10-Xcode4-Support but that seems to be for the master. I use v1.1 as I use the TTLauncher.
The project builds fine with a normal build, and runs perfect on an iPhone.
But when I want to create the archive (for the IPA for distribution) then I get 18 errors and 8 warnings.
The first one is:
../scripts/Protect.command: line 23: cd: /Users/XXX/Library/Developer/Xcode/DerivedData/iDoms-cmyivarwxpbvqdfnyclqdrikrtmw/ArchiveIntermediates/iDoms/BuildProductsPath/Release-iphoneos/../three20/Three20UICommon: No such file or directory
Most others are 'no such file or directory' on e.g.:
#import "Three20Core/TTGlobalCoreLocale.h"
or 'undeclared (first use of function)' which comes from the 'no such file or directory issue I presume'.
In my 'Header search paths' I have:
$(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/../three20
$(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/../../three20
../../three20/Build/Products/three20
/usr/include/libxml2
Any help would be very appreciated!
Just to add to Colin's answer: you can use Xcode's dependent projects feature to use three20, even though the three20 website says it's not "officially supported":
In your workspace, right-click on the empty space in your project navigator. Select "Add files to "My Workspace", and select the three20 project (three20/src/Three20/Three20.xcodeproj). This is the only project you need to add: it is not necessary to manually add the three20 subprojects.
Select your project in the navigator, go to Build Phases, open "Link binary with libraries", click on the "+" in the bottom left corner, and add the Three20 libraries: libThree20.a, libThree20Core.a, libThree20Network.a, libThree20Style.a, libThree20UI.a, libThree20UICommon.a and libThree20Navigator.a. This will cause Xcode to build Three20 when you build your project.
Add ${BUILD_DIR}/three20 to your include path as per Colin's answer: go to build settings, double click on "Header Search Paths", and add ${BUILD_DIR}/three20 (it will show as build/three20 when you close the dialog).
Add three20/src/Three20.bundle to your resources.
It's probably also a good idea to add the linker flags -ObjC and -all_load if you haven't already done so (same dialog, setting "Other Linker Flags").
The steps above are good enough for compiling the code. To make "Archive" work too, you will need to:
Add $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/../three20 and $(BUILT_PRODUCTS_DIR)/../../three20 to the Header Search Paths setting. If you don't you will get compilation errors that the three20 headers cannot be found.
For all Three20 projects (so not just the top-level project), go the Build Settings and set "Skip Install" to YES. If you don't, the project will build, but you will not be able to create an IPA.
Make sure that your product name (select your target, go to Build Settings, then setting "Product Name") does not contain spaces, otherwise archiving will not work.
Finally, if you're getting errors such as ld: library not found for -lThree20 and you are using a custom build configuration (such as AdHoc), make sure to add the same build configuration to each of the Three20 projects too (just duplicate the Release configuration).
You should check out this StackOverflow question.
I've reproduced the accepted answer below:
So it looks like the easiest way
to get old Xcode 3.2 projects to work
with Xcode 4 is to do the following:
Go into Xcode 4's preferences (Cmd+,).
Select the "Locations" tab. Where it
says "Build Locations", select the
drop down and pick "Place build
products in locations specified by
targets" I'll write up a three20.info
article going into more details about
this.
Add these two paths to your header search paths in the build settings for your target:
"$(BUILD_DIR)/three20"
"$(BUILD_DIR)/../three20"
The first entry is needed for regular builds and the second entry is needed for archives.
It's that easy.
Incidentally, to create a file in your home directory with a list of all of Xcode's environment variables for your target's environement, add the following Run script build phase to your target with contents:
ENV > ~/xcode-environment.sh
Note that in this case, if your project is not making it through the compile phase of the build process, and your Run script comes later, the script won't get executed, so put it first.
I'm using Xcode version 3.2.2.
If I follow these steps with Xcode:
create a new Cocoa application called "Test"
in Info change the "Build Products Path" to "_build"
build project
I find that there is still a "build" directory being created called:
build/Test.build/Test.pbxindex/<various files>
These look like the files that Xcode creates when indexing the project. Is there anyway to change this location so these go into the new "_build" location?
I've just tested the steps you outlined above in XCode 3.2.3 and I could not reproduce that symptom. Renaming the build products path to "_build" properly moves all build-related files (and the .pbindex) to that location. I have also built with the different XCode-project compatibility options with the same results.
Thinking this might be a bug in XCode 3.2.2, I've read the changelog but no such symptom is reported, and I personally have not seen that before.
An option that might help (but it should NOT be necessary) is to set the Build Intermediate Files path (in the Info panel of the Project) to the "Build products location", but I presume you have already tried that. In my XCode, the only case where the .pbxindex files do get built in another location is when I force them to by choosing the "Custom location" in the same panel.
Is it possible that it's a simple oversight on your part and that you haven't removed the directory after the cleanup? If not, then some more information would be helpful:
perform a clean build
open up the debugger (CMD+Shift+B)
from the toolbar, make sure you have toggled "All Results" under overview, "By Step", and "All Messages" from the last combobox
right-click somewhere in the debug output, and choose the option "Open These Results as a Transcript File"
HTH
As I write most of my code using MacVIM, I need to add the new files to the XCode project in order to compile them into the executable. Today however I encountered an implementation file (.m) which XCode won't allow to be added. It appears light gray in the appropriate finder window as if it were already included in the project, but when I try to build, I get a linker error, stating that the symbol defined this implementation file could not be found. The corresponding header file could be added without problems.
Any idea what could have caused this problem?
Btw. I deleted a former version of the same file from the "Classes" tree before, as well as many others which were successfully re-added.
I think I saw a similar problem once with an old version of Xcode. IIRC the way I resolved it was to:
rename the source file (temporarily)
add the renamed file to the project
do a "Save As..." on the renamed file to get it back to the original name
The file is probably already in your project, but not in the target you're building. Use the Detail view and Search bubble to find it, Get Info, and in the Targets tab of the info window, check the check box for the target you're building.
The other answer (removing and re-adding) works because you end up removing it from the project, then when you re-add it, it's added to the current target by default.
I found that deleting my pbxuser file from inside the .xcodeproj solved the problem for me. There were references to the files I couldn't add in there, surprisingly. This has happened to me many times over the years.
Another trick is to:
Move the file into a different directory
Add it to the XCode project from there
Move it to the desired location
Select the file in Groups & Files
Choose File > Get Info from the menu bar. The full path will appear in red.
Press the Choose... button and select the file at the new location.
If you are using Xcode 4, you can do the following steps to add an existing file into your target:
1) Select your file in "Project navigator" view (aka. click your myfile.m file in the folder tree of Xcode)
2) Click menu item "View" => "Utilities" => "Show File inspector" (or use the shortcut "Alt + Command + 1)
3) There is one section called "Target Membership", check the target you want
I fixed this by deleting the .xcuserstate file and restarting the project. I am using a workspace file, for all it's worth.
You can find any and all referencing files via
grep -r -h [NameOfFileThatYouAreTryingToAdd] *
from within your project directory.