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Comment by jsankey | Hacker News Reader

There is support for debugging native code with gdb, and in the latest Android tools releases this is integrated into Eclipse via the CDT. However, it can still be difficult to set up - if it doesn't work the easy way it's very difficult to figure out how to fix it.

And although there are quirks (mainly performance related) in the ADT/Eclipse combo your description is far from my experience. The overall experience is better, IMO, than Xcode. The latter is the buggiest IDE I've ever used.

Frankly AppCode/IntelliJ beat both in many respects, but frustratingly don't quite cover the full range of functionality. It's difficult to make the leap when you need to go back to Xcode/Eclipse to accomplish some of your work each day.

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You really need a lot of nerve to talk about how ADT is better than xcode.

I used xcode for more than three years now, wrote a lot of object c/c/c++ and even assembler, and yet to find any major bug. This year I tried to port one of my app to Android, and the biggest challenge happens to be debugging native code. Basically you can't, there are some tutorials to set up gdb, but it shouldn't be that hard, and I don't bother. I ended up with printf, of course it is a nightmare.

If Google can deliver a xcode quality IDE, it'd already ruled the world.

You're being unnecessarily hostile. Obviously our experiences have been different having used the same tools on different projects. I find plenty of problems with both IDEs, but for me Xcode has been the more painful because of bugs.

That must be a bad day with Eclipse. Different projects, maybe.

Really? There is support for native code debugging if and only if you go through a boatload of non-obvious, unofficially documented steps. On Xcode I can fire it up and instantly set breakpoints - without settings tons of non-default settings, recompiling magic gdb.setup files, and hacking the built-in build scripts.

Then when you get to single stepping its ridiculously slow. Anyone that has used or attempted to use the NDK debugger cannot say with a straight face that it is up to par with modern tools.

Oh...then there is the issue of ridiculously uninformative stack traces.

Its generally easier to build your code in an x-plat fashion in C++ and then work out as many bugs on iOS as you can and then - as the parent said - leave printf turds everywhere.

Stone knives and bear skins...

I recently ported a PC game written in C++ to Android. I basically used the command-line gdb to debug the program when I needed to. It was a PITA at times, especially when it would sometimes lose track of the program when stepping through. It definitely felt a bit half-baked. I definitely can't say the experience was easier than using Xcode.

Show me a link that actually describes how to make it work. I have yet to see one.

tools.android.com/recent/usingthendkplugin

It's a relatively new addition, and as warned above it still might not work in all setups in my experience. But it's worth a go.

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