Google Chrome won't let me place breakpoints

Question

I've been using Google Chrome to debug my javascript, but then all of a sudden I can no longer place breakpoints. I click on the line number, where I previously clicked to add a breakpoint, but no breakpoint will be added. Sometimes if I click very fast, like a madman, I can see it trying to add breakpoints, but it won't stick.

The only thing I changed was adding JSONView. I uninstalled that, but still can't add breakpoints.

Does anyone have any idea?

An edit: I can place breakpoints on other pages, like StackOverflow, just not the one I'm developing running on localhost.

Answer 1

No it's not fixed. The Chrome debugger has done this for as long as I can remember. Just close and reopen the debugger and it usually comes right again. Sometimes you may need to try several times for it to work.

Answer 2

This bug was fixed yesterday (February 3) with the introduction of a new api for managing JavaScript breakpoints: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=69988

I downloaded the most recent Chromium nightly from http://build.chromium.org/f/chromium/snapshots/ and was able to successfully set breakpoints in JavaScript, which I had been unable to do using the current stable/beta/dev builds of Chrome.

Hopefully this fix will be incorporated into the next releases of Chrome. Until then, adding debugger; statements to your code is a decent workaround for setting breakpoints.

Answer 3

This will also happen when trying to set a breakpoint on unreachable code. If starting up a debugger in a new chrome process continues to cause problems, make sure there's no errant breaks or returns etc. prior to the breakpoint.

eg:

var foo = 'bar';
return foo;

foo = 'baz';
debugger

^^^ statements after return in above example will not be reached, chrome will rightly refuse to honor debugger commands or set breakpoints

Answer 4

Check your JS code! Got the error too on Chrome (and Firefox) and the error was a method named exactly like another.