What to do if Flex Builder says, “Installed Flash Player Is Not a Debugger”
Posted June 30, 2006 
Comments(22)
Comments(22) If you have installed Flex Builder, and when try to debug you get an error message that says “Installed Flash Player is not a debugger,” or if the Flex SDK’s fdb command-line debugger says, “Failed to connect; session timed out,” then see this TechNote to get instructions on how to fix the problem.
A packaging problem with the initial release of Flex Builder and the SDK has caused a number of people to run into this. Luckily, fixing it is easy.
Hey,
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All the best
Mattias
There appears to be a problem with the debugger. If I click the debug button, and then just close the flash player, around the 3rd or 4th time I get the dialog box with “Where is the debugger or profiler running?”
The problem can be avoided by clicking the terminate button — is this required instead of just closing the player? The IDE confusingly reports the debugging is terminated in both cases. Also, the keyboard shortcut does not work for terminate (and the menu is grayed out) — only the button works, requiring the user to click (kind of annoying)
drvannostrand,
There is a known bug that occasionally the “Where is the debugger or profiler running?” message comes up when it shouldn’t, due to a problem in the communication between the Flash Player and the debugger. We have fixed this internally. The fix was in the player, so the fix will be in the next release of the debugger version of the player (I’m not sure when that will be). Sorry for the inconvenience.
Closing the player or clicking the terminate button are both supposed to work. As you noticed, this particular bug seems to come up more often if you close the player, but that has to do with the nature of the bug, not with any intentional design.
As for the keyboard shortcut not working, and the menu being grayed out, I can’t reproduce that problem — for me, the menu is not grayed out. What keyboard shortcut, though? As far as I can see, Terminate does not have a shortcut associated with it. Unless you mean that you assigned your own custom shortcut, of course.
Mike — thanks alot for your reply. Glad to hear you guys have fixed it.
A clarification — The terminate menu option is grayed out in the flex development view while debugging if FB stays in development view. Only the terminate button on the console tab is available. When I select debug sometimes the view switches to “flex debugging” and sometimes it stays in the development view. I’m not sure if this is another problem, or a setting somewhere. Whether I switch intentionally or it happens automatically, if the view switches to debugging, the terminate menu option is then available upon subsequent debugs, in either the development or debug views.
Ah, right, I think I know what you’re talking about. Basically, the problem is that the tree in the “Debug” view has not been expanded.
Here is the issue: The Terminate button (as well as the other similar buttons, e.g. Resume, Suspend, Step Into) is very picky: It is only enabled if the currently selected item in the Debug view is something that you can terminate. And in Eclipse 3.1, there is a bug that sometimes the Debug view does not expand its tree, and therefore does not select the top frame of the stack. So, since there is no appropriate selection, Terminate is grayed out. This is a bug in Eclipse, not in Adobe’s plugins. I think it has been fixed in Eclipse 3.2 (which we don’t yet support; we’re working on that).
The workaround is to manually expand the tree view and select the item you want to terminate.
As for it sometimes switching to the flex debugging perspective, and sometimes not: Eclipse has a feature to switch perspectives when the debug target suspends (e.g. hits a breakpoint), but not when it launches. That’s why sometimes you see it switch, and sometimes you don’t. This is under Window > Preferences, Run/Debug.
Thanks for your replies. Very helpful.
What’s the best forum for these types of questions and bug reports? I posted the same question on the adobe.com flex support forums and did not get a reply. Is adobe monitoring those forums?
hi, i am building my first website. i have a flash module inside it. last few days i’ve been having adobe security screen conflicts. today, the ““Where is the debugger or profiler running?” screen started coming up. i did a google search, that led me to your blog. i am not using flex. i am using flash 8 professional and dreamweaver. you will find this error message when you “film”, on the homepage menu, this is the flash page i am building. any ideas to solve this problem?
Max,
You have published to your website a swf which contains debugging information. If you’re using Flex Builder, then the debug version is myproject-debug.swf; if you’re using the free Flex SDK, then the debug version is any swf which was compiled with -debug.
(By the way, even if you publish the debug swf, the only people that will see this message are Flash/Flex developers who have installed the debugger version of the Flash Player instead of the release version that most of the general public installs. But still, so that everyone can see it correctly, you should publish the release swf.)
got it! thank you. i understand, as well as remember now turnning on a remote bugging option in publish when i was trying to debug other problem. your blog and advice has brought this issue to a close. thanks.
drvannostrand,
Replying to your message on August 30 — sorry for the late reply. You asked where is the best place to ask questions.
The forums are the best place. Adobe does try to monitor them, but unfortunately we have been falling behind lately. I talked to one of the product managers about your message, so they’re aware of the issue; we’ll do our best to stay on top of the forums.
Max, please contact me. I can provide a bit of personal specific assistance via Kris. I appologize that this reply is not helpful on this site.
Hi all
I keep getting the famous “Where is the debugger or profiler running?”. Prior I have a pop up asking to look in Localhost or to enter an IP address. message comes up ever since I have installed FB2. I need a fix to this because 5 days on trying to start a debug is too much. My Flash debug player is 9.0.28.0 fine.
Please provide any ideas. –best regards.
I have an Urgent need for a Perm. Sr. Applications Developer/Flex Architect in the Dallas Texas area, would you happen to know of anyone with that experience that would be interested? If so please let me know.
Kim Dobson
Placement Manager
214-277-2097
Hi Kim,
A better place to post would be on the "flexcoders" mailing list, at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/flexcoders . They apparently do allow job postings on that list.
Hi
how can I create arrays in a for loop in as3.The beneath code is wrong.
for (var i:Number=0;i<10;i++) {
var myarray"i":Array= new Array; //I need myarray0, myarray1,….myarray9
}
Thanks for your help
newbie,
If you need multiple arrays, then you will need to make them properties of some other object. For example:
var arrayOfArrays:Array = new Array();
for (var i:Number=0; i<10; i++) {
var myArray:Array = new Array();
arrayOfArrays[i] = myArray;
}
Now, arrayOfArrays is an array with numeric indices — e.g. arrayOfArrays[0] is the first one, etc.
That is the normal way to do it. But if you really need the individual arrays to be named as in your example, e.g arrayOfArrays["myarray0"], arrayOfArrays["myarray1"], etc. instead of arrayOfArrays[0], arrayOfArrays[1], etc., then you can use this in the loop:
arrayOfArrays["myarray"+i] = myArray;
spot on re: the arrays.
but i guess you can also do one of something like:
eval("var myArray"+i+" = new Array();"); // use of eval
or perhaps:
_root["myArray"+i] = new Array(); // using _root array of variables
messier and some issues tho’
Still don’t get that debugger profiler thing. sigh
ActionScript 3 doesn’t support eval(), and it doesn’t have _root.
mike please help me.
I have the main app, I put in the Library path utilities.swc, flex.swc, rpc.swc .. as RSL (not merge into code, not external), so that when I load new classes, these should have all the framework available.
But I get the annoying "Where is the debugger or profiler running" screen like 10-15 times when I start the app. It does not show only if I push debug. (if I hit play in builder or refresh in browser I get the screen).
what can I do ?
Marius, we hope to have several changes in the next versions of Flex and the Flash Player which will fix this problem. In the meantime, your options are limited. You can avoid RSLs during active development, and turn them back on later; you can always click Debug instead of Run (that’s what I would probably do); you can change your project so that only framework.swc is an RSL, since that’s the biggest one so you won’t get the message as many times.
from what I understand the flex.swf, framework.swf … are compiled with debug option to true. are there any tools that extract the debug feature?
I need something to work for the finished product… what other choices do I have? (I don’t want users with debug flash player version to see those screens)
( what other ways are there.. for the new classes that I load to see the whole framework, not only the classes referenced and included in the main app)
thanks a bunch! :D
hi, 10x for post!!!