andrewlucking.com » fdtracer

fdtracer 0.3.4 – compatibility release and end of life

andrew — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 00:28:24 +0000

FDTracer
I put together this update sometime ago but am only “officially” releasing it now. The recent release of FlashDevelop 3 RC1 requires that you also update your installed version of the FDTracer plugin:

Download FDTracer 0.3.4:
http://www.andrewlucking.com/code/fdtracer/

FlashLogViewer
Apparently I have a habit of writing plugins who’s features end up getting baked into the product they extend. I’m happy to announce that FDTracer is facing it’s EOL. The current pre-release of FlashDevelop 3 RC2 includes a FlashLogViewer plugin which provides FDTracer like functionality and more. I installed FD3 RC2 this afternoon and FlashLogViewer feels like an old friend:

fdtracer 0.3.2 – flashdevelop 3 b4 compatibility

andrew — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 22:39:49 +0000

I just made a quick update to the FDTracer plugin for FlashDevelop. This fix resolves an issue with FlashDevelop beta 4 and selecting FDTracer’s “Settings…” option from the plugin’s context menu.

Along with the revisions to the FD Settings Manager in beta 4 came a couple of API changes so you should only use this version of the plugin with beta 4 (or greater). If you’re still using beta 3 I’d say it’s a good time to update both.

Download FDTracer 0.3.2:
http://www.andrewlucking.com/code/fdtracer/

fdtrace 0.3.1 – stringbuilder performance gains

andrew — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:00:40 +0000

I stumbled across a bit of a performance problem with FDTracer last week. While working in FlashDevelop I noticed that things were beginning to respond a little slowly. The problem gradually grew worse and my system resources manager clearly showed that some part of FD was the culprit. After a bit of digging around it was obvious that FDTracer was at the root of it all.

I happened to be listening to a Flash video stream in the browser while I was working and the video’s swf player was tracing out debug data every 10 milliseconds or so. After about a 1/2 hour of this my debug Flash Player’s log file had grown to many thousand lines and FDTracer was chugging to parse the contents.

Upon replacing a String concatenation or two with a StringBuilder routine FDTracer was once again humming along. The performance gains were pretty astounding and definitely taught me a lesson I won’t forget anytime soon.

Download FDTracer 0.3.1:
http://www.andrewlucking.com/code/fdtracer/

fdtracer 0.2 – minor improvements

andrew — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 22:18:59 +0000

Version 0.2 of The FDTracer plugin for FlashDevelop 3 adds a couple of setting options:

Open Panel On Compile is the result of an improvement suggestion. When this option is selected the FDTracer panel will always be displayed after a compile completes.

Colour Warnings and Errors adds some colour to the trace statements. Warnings and errors generated by the Flash Player appear in orange and red fonts respectively.

~~Download FDTracer 0.2:~~
Download FDTracer 0.3:
http://www.andrewlucking.com/code/fdtracer/

Update:
Argh. I used version 0.2 all week before posting it last night and then this afternoon I came across a bug that was dropping digits that begin a trace statement (eg, trace(”1,2,3″); would display as “,2,3“). Version 0.3 should fix that silliness.

fdtracer – flash tracer plugin for flashdevelop 3

andrew — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 22:44:13 +0000

What is FDTracer?
The FDTracer plugin for FlashDevelop 3 is a ‘port’ of Alessandro Crugnola’s awesome FlashTracer Firefox extension. It adds a panel to the FlashDevelop 3 IDE to display trace() statements logged to the debug Flash Player’s log file.

Installing FDTracer
FDTracer should work with FlashDevelop 3 and can be installed by copying the FDTracer.dll to the FD3 plugins directory (note that FD3 plugins are now stored in the user’s application folder).

Configuring FDTracer Settings
After installing, you’ll need to open the FDTracer settings dialog (”Tools > Installed plugins > FDTracer settings”) and set the traceOutputFileName to point to the debug Flash Player log file.

Download FDTracer 0.1:
Grab the FDTracer_0.1.zip from
http://www.andrewlucking.com/code/fdtracer/
(The source is here).

Requirements:
FDTracer displays the contents of the debug Flash Player log file and so requires that you are using the debug version of Flash Player.

Useful links:
Adobe Flash Player downloads
Configuring the debugger version of Flash Player
FlashDevelop 3 Beta 3
FlashTracer Firefox Add-on