Flex application not working without debug version of Flash Player

Recently, I was having a requirement to develop the Flex Log management functionality. After doing lots of research and investing a time for 3 to four days I successfully managed the things to achieve the flex logging Mechanism which can log Line Number, Function Name, Class name into log File.

After delivering the functionality I was happy that I have done it  Its really a nice feeling. I was hoping for appreciation but result was bit different I have received a clients mail saying that on some of the machines Flex app not working without debug version of Flash Player , It was really an Head scratching experience when application just stopped running with a white background in screen with clock display.  I was quite surprised that application which were running perfectly well on my PC, wasn’t displayed properly on some of the PCs.

Hmm.. No Clues at all. I must say Adobe Sometimes handles such situation in very ugly, and with very unprofessional manner, its a horrible handling of such situation by Adobe Flex Framework Developers must criticized them for such things.

After lots of efforts and lots of revision to the newly added code, after doing everything finally the application showed up on one of the problematic machine when I changed the Flash Player version from standard one to debug.

Scenario and Solution

I was using following code

//Call To The Function traceDetails(new Error())

private function traceDetails(err:Error):void { err.getStackTrace(); } On My part i was using the method “getStackTrace()” Here the thing to remember is that getStackTrace() method is only available with Flash Debugger and Not With Flash player. So wherever i do not have Flash Debugger installed my application stops running.

So Things to do

1. Check if You’re using any API call that are only available in Flash Debugger and Not in Flash player (If You found Try commenting that line Application will start running).

2. Solutions may be Install Flash Debugger Version wherever you are running your application but not feasible considering end user because your application is not loaded successfully and you cannot prompt user.

3. In wrapper class put a check with JavaScript for Flash Debugger version availability and if it is not available through JavaScript Message Saying you need to have flash layer Debugger version installed along with link to install it J

4. Simply before your Flash Debugger API calls Check if(Capabilities.isDebugger) only then use those API or Skip those lines.

I am sure this will solve many peoples problem.

Following thread discussed the same problem

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1137223/flex-app-not-working-without-debug-version-of-flash-player

Another Example how developer suffer due to some mismanaged framework things

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/867788/compile-flex-application-without-debug-optimisation-options-for-flex-compiler

Best Luck & Happy coding

Thanks and regards

Shashank Kulkarni

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