I’ve set up Eclipse (3.7.2) with the Android Development Toolkits (16.0.1), including Dalvik Debug Monitor Service (16.0.1), as directed in different more or less official tutorials.
If I write a “standard” Android application, with a launcher Activity, then I can set breakpoints in my code, run it on a Virtual Android Device, and the break points break as expected, and I can spend my whole night debugging code if I want.
The problem comes when instead of a “standard” Android application, I start playing around with an Android home screen widget, which does not have a launcher Activity. If I want to debug my code, I still can set breakpoints easily. Let’s say I put a breakpoint straight in the onUpdate of my implementation of my AppWidgetProvider, and I test it by adding an instance of my widget to the AVD. The breakpoint doesn’t break. I figure, this is because in the Debug Configurations, the launch action for my widget is “do nothing”, as there is no Activity I can select.
Googling around, I found that when my AVD was running, I could go to the DDMS view in Eclipse, and in its Devices tab, I could select my widget process, and click on a cute green bug “debug selected process”. If after that, I create an instance of my widget in the AVD, then the execution does break on my breakpoint.
But here comes my next problem: when this happens, I have about a few seconds in the debugger, before Android decides that my widget process has hung (which is true), and should be shot (which is not true)! Therefore my question is: how to prevent the system from shooting my process stopped at a breakpoint?
Note: In the log I get that sort of notification:
06-11 17:02:19.900: W/ActivityManager(59): Scheduling restart of crashed service [...]
Start a service that doesn’t run on the main thread (such as
IntentServcie) from your widget receiver (onUpdate()). Do all your work there.