Remote Debugging Using Flex Builder IDE

This is repost from 2009 but its still valid. A lot of developers are still unaware of these powerful features.

I came across the wonderful world of remote debugging and was surprised to find such a powerful feature within Flex Builder. I have been using it since then for every project. I have listed a step by step guide on how to configure your Flex IDE to use remote debugging.

Its important to note that if you have exported the project as a release to the remote site, this approach will not work(for the obvious release that its no longer a dev project). To use remote debugging, developers like myself just copy the contents of the bin folder and use these files for remote debugging.

Initially,I had a painful experience finding an article on Remote Debugging with Flex 3. Here’s some free  advice in a few time saving steps:

1. Copy your project to a remote site (In my case: http://myDevServer:9080/myRemoteApp). You should copy the files out directly from the Bin folder of your project as mentioned above.
2. In Flex Builder 3, navigate to Run > Debug > Other… or click on that bug icon and click on other.
3. In the Create, Manage and Run Configurations dialog that just opened up, either create a new configuration or keep the one that just opened up for you ( I’m assuming you were debugging the app locally on your PC before you decided to run remote debugging).
4. In the URL or Path to Launch section, uncheck the Use defaults checkbox.
5. In the debug, run and profile fields, add the location of the html file hosted on the remote server( Developers tend to point these to the swf file, it doesn’t work that way). e.g., http://myDevServer:9080/myRemoteApp/index.html

6. Click on the apply button, close your eyes and click the debug button to start debugging your remote application.