Blackberry debugging on Linux via bjdwp

Question

I've gone down the long road of using Linux for Blackberry development. Currently that means:

bb-ant-tools - for building

net_rim_api.jar - and other Blackberry goodies from the Eclipse plugin 1.3.0

preverify - from either the J2ME SDK or WTK, I forgot which

Retrotranslator - for shoehorning some of Java 5 into J2ME

bjavaloader - from Barry, for pushing apps to my device

I'm pretty far off the beaten path, and I've given up Eclipse to boot because I prefer vim. The last remaining piece of the puzzle is:

Blackberry debugging on Linux

I've tried bjdwp, also from the Barry project. I can connect and see some console output when I attach via jdp. However trying to use jdp features seems to fail. Debugging as a remote application in Eclipse results in the following error:

terminate called after throwing an instance of 'Barry::Error'

what(): Controller: requested mode not supported

Could the best way be to setup jdwp in Windows in Virtualbox and connect remotely to that from Linux?

Answer 1

This may be a simpleminded idea you've already considered but could you open up sockets from Linux to Windows and basically just do a print statement level debugging? You just need to get some data out so you can see what is going on, right?

Answer 2

I think that after the fledge.exe starts on Windows, all communications are done via socket. So one viable option (that requires a VM or ability to run fledge on WINE - haven't tried the latter) is to create a file named fledge.exe on unix, with executable permissions.

It, in turn, triggers a startup sequence in WINE or the VM that launches the actual requested simulator, passing through all supplied arguments. It would proxy all debug port traffic between the real simulator and eclipse.

It's convoluted, and does require VM or WINE setup, but I think it may work. (WINE would be easier, as writing a launcher to start a specific exe on a VM would carry its own challenges.) This is something I've been thinking about looking closer at lately but haven't really had time for.

I also say this without having attempted to configure fledgecontroller/fledge.exe itself to run under wine automatically. I think that's possible; and if it worked it would probably be the easiest path.