The Spark Inspector is now available in Xcode, just like Instruments | Hacker News Reader

The Spark Inspector is now available in Xcode, just like Instruments

sparkinspector.com

23 pointsbengotow9 comments

I love Spark Inspector but they just don't respond to support requests. Because it uses Bonjour to connect your app to the Inspector, if you are on a corporate LAN, the Bonjour publish often fails. The only work-around is to disable your network completely while debugging and re-enabling your networking after establishing a connection just causes the established connection to be severed. Much sadface for an otherwise wonderful debugger.

Hey! Author of the app here—sorry you've had trouble reaching me. I agree that Bonjour is a poor solution for corporate networks. I've always hoped that time would resolve those sort of issues (routers not supporting Bonjour's DNS packets, etc...) but it's been years and it's still a problem.

At the moment I'm not sure what other technology the Spark Inspector could use. I'd like to make it talk through LLDB entirely, and the latest update is a step in that direction, but there are many steps left to go.

Thanks for your post—feel free to reach out to me at my primary email bengotow@gmail.com if you need anything.

Could a lightweight TCP server/client running on localhost work? Just wondering.

Why not make the Inspector app listen on a predefined port? With no configuration (like if launched from Xcode) the client-app could try to connect to inspector at localhost on that port. Otherwise, do what PonyDebugger does and allow you specify a specific host/port via a singleton object.

Instead of this:

  lldb attach -p `ps x|grep MobileCal|grep -v grep|awk '{print $1}'`

You might want to try this:

  lldb attach -p `pgrep -x MobileCal`

Does this work for C++ apps? Like Cocos2D-x.

How well does this compare to Reveal?

I personally prefer Spark Inspector over Reveal after having tried both. I find the interface much easier to read, though I do like the overall darker appearance of Reveal better. One feature that SI has over Reveal is the notification inspector, which I've found useful at times. Aside from that there's no noticeable difference in the feature list that I've run into.

Reveal does do a better job of presenting views with pattern image background colors. In SI these are often not displayed at all.

Edit: It looks like one of the release note items in 1.1.1 is "Views are now rendered more correctly in the Spark Inspector. Additional support for UIColor pattern images, CAShapeLayer, and more."

I personally do not find the 3D view in either one useful at all. It's too noisy with something of any complexity to see the hierarchy, and particularly in SI's case with limited background support it can be harder to see certain elements.

My two biggest wish list items for either one would be:

1. CALayer hierarchy inspection in the same manner as the UIView inspection works. I frequently use CALayer hierarchies when building custom controls rather than UIView ones because I find it easier.

2. Constraint visualization. It would be very useful to be able to know when custom constraints have been overridden (e.g., in a UITableViewCell subclass) while trying to debug layout problems.

Hey, Sean here from Reveal. Thanks for the feedback.

Making the 3D view useful for large view hierarchies is exactly why we implemented drilldown so you can focus in on one section of the view hierarchy. Try double clicking a view in the outline or canvas. It may just be personal preference, but we've had many people comment that the 3D view is immensely useful, and we've found it useful in our own use of the product.

This presentation I did at Melbourne Cocoaheads might shed some light on how useful that feature (and others in Reveal) are. https://vimeo.com/78441103. Scratch the surface and I think you'll find a lot of other useful features.

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