Remote Debugging of Firefox Extension

It is possible to debug the Firefox extension embedded using object/embed tag on a page in the inspector UI. When you do that the external interface and other context will be used from the original web page, however Shumway code and options used in the inspector.html.

Building the code

Run grunt firefox to build the extension. It's possible to change the code during debug session -- run grunt build to refresh inspector's code base.

Install/configure the extension

Install the built Firefox extension from ./build/firefox/shumway.xpi. If you are using multiple profiles, install the extension in one that will run a web page.

To enable remote debugging, add boolean shumway.debug.enabled preference in the about:config, and set it to true. You may need to restart the Firefox. If you are done with debugging, change the preference to false to avoid unneeded network connections.

Run servers

The regular server is needed to execute the inspector, run grunt server. In addition to that, to enable the remote debugging, execute grunt exec:debug_server.

Start the Inspector

Open one browser instance/window/tab at http://localhost:8000/example/inspector/inspector.html, add set "remoteEnabled" inspector option on the Settings tab and restart the page. (Workaround if Settings tab is not visible, open any SWF file)

If you know the URL of the SWF, you can set "remoteSWF" option as well, otherwise see below.

Initiate Debugging

Open Firefox with the extension configured for debugging, and open the page you are trying to debug. If you did not provide "remoteSWF" option (see above), click "Debug this SWF" in the context menu and that option will be set automatically. You will see the green placeholder if the SWF started debugging in the inspector.

The inspector is configured to restart the web page (see "remoteAutoReload" options) when the inspector itself is reloaded.