I am creating an installer using the Adobe AIR captive runtime feature. Normally, the compiler generates a directory for me with all the necessary files that I then use to generate an .msi installer with.
Before, I could just double click the .exe file in this generated directory and the application would already work. (Good way of checking whether the generated files are valid).
I have now stumbled into the situation where I double-click the .exe file and nothing happens. No error message, no logs, nothing. The .exe file just exits immediately.
I have dug up and older installer of my app and tried to run this, the resulting install works fine. But once I replace my SWF file in the install directory with a new build of my app, I once again have the problem.
So, obviously SOMETHING in the Main.swf doesn’t agree with the .exe file, but since there are no error messages or whatever it is extremely hard to figure out what the problem is.
The application runs fine from the IDE, by the way, the problem only occurs when I use it in combination with the captive runtime output.
Has anybody ever experienced something similar? And how were you able to figure out what was going on? Is there some secret place where AIR perhaps logs some errors, or is there a way to convince it to output some kind of error log?
You need to create a blank file with no extension called “Debug” (I used textedit and simply removed the extension manually). Put that in the META-INF/AIR/ folder, next to application.xml. This will cause the Air runtime to run in debug mode.
From what I can tell, if there are any fatal errors (e.g. a certain failover .swz file can’t be loaded) then at least you’ll be able to see what’s going on.
Did you manage to make this work?