Debugging GWT applications outside of dev mode?

Question

It seems to me that someone is attaching a Java debugger to a compiled / deployed GWT application in a screencast. Is it possible? I find some rare references to setting up a special “debugging” module that extends your regular, but the details are subtle.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use dev mode to debug a deployed application, but you will debug your current code (from eclipse) instead of the deployed one. How? As with debugging on localhost, change the URL and do the following:

http://your-test-or-production-or-sth-server.com/application.html?gwt.codesvr=localhost:9997

This will allow you to debug real problems that occur in the environment with real data and previously deployed gwt services (or ejb beans and other things). Just remember that you are not debugging the compiled gwt code, you are debugging the code that you used when you started the dev mode. Of course, you can debug the version of the application deployed on the server (by checking this version from your source control system), but there is no way to actually debug javascript in java (1), which I know about.

(1) - http://code.google.com/p/chromedevtools/