flashlog.txt for trace();

Posted by Jesse Freeman | Filed under Advanced Topics, Workflow

In this post I talked about how I see trace comments in my console (on Mac OS X) and a few people were interested in how I set that up. Here is some info to help you out.

Before you do anything make sure you install the Debug Player for Flash 9.0.xxx (what ever the version is this week). You will see the link for it down the page a little under Adobe Flash Player 9 — Debugger Versions. If you do not have this installed you will not be able get any of this to work. Here is a screen shot to show you how you will know if you the Debug Player installed.

Debugger Player

When you right click on any Flash SWF in your browser you should see the words “debugger” in the context menu.

Once I had the Debug Player installed, I set all this up with Textmate and the excellent bundle from here. Here are a few screens from the debug the options you need to click on to get it working.

as3_debug_1.jpg

This is the bundle I am using, you can download it here

as3_debug_2.jpg

These are the debug options. I clicked on all of them starting with “Format fsch…”, “Install mm.cfg”, then “Opne flashlog.txt…”

Also you should check out this really great post from http://blog.flexexamples.com. It does an excelent job of walking you through how to manually set this up on a Mac and a PC.

Here is a screen from my Mac Console window reading off of the flashlog.txt file. Its not at fast as the Flash IDE output window but for day to day development it is a life saver.

Console Log Trace Outputs

Nice, look at all those cool traces!

One last thing, I found this link on google by searching for “mm.cfg” and it talks about trouble shooting.

Permalink | May 3rd, 2008

  • Macario
    Hi, for me the flashlog file is not being generated anyone has an idea why?

    I think I followed all the steps not necessarily in order.
  • Cool glad it helped. Thanks for calling to my attention that it was even possible! I'm going to start putting ASCII art in my AS files now, and maybe a little self promotion too! Haha.

    Who knows, maybe I'll one day put in that telnet ASCII animated star wars episode IV into a file one day! Hehe.

    (For those that don't know about it type "telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl" into your Terminal)
  • Good to know! I work in the terminal (begrudgingly a lot these days) and thats a good shortcut to have on hand. Going to set it up right now...
  • Correction: my solution outputs to the Terminal, not the Console.
  • I didn't realize this was included in the TextMate AS3 bundle! Awesome.

    For those that don't have TM, I set this up a different way, not having noticed the option in the TM bundle.

    I wrote these aliases into my .bash_profile file (hopefully you can distinguish the line breaks):

    # tracing flash
    #----------------------------------------------
    # trace output in terminal
    alias flash="tail -f ~/library/preferences/macromedia/flash\ player/logs/flashlog.txt"

    # delete flashlog.txt file
    alias rmflash="rm ~/library/preferences/macromedia/flash\ player/logs/flashlog.txt"

    # create new flashlog.txt file
    alias newflash="touch ~/library/preferences/macromedia/flash\ player/logs/flashlog.txt"

    Now in terminal, I can just type "flash", and the console will show the output. I'm not sure if the other two commands of deleting and creating a fresh file are necessary, but I've been using them too.
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