Cannot debug FireMonkey applications on OS X 10.7.3 with XE2 Update 4

Question

Short recap for people that came here via the internet search.

On some installations Delphi can't debug FireMonkey applications on OS X. Symptoms: Delphi starts loading the Debug desktop and then locks. Pressing Ctrl+C in the PAServer stops the PAServer and unfreezes the Delphi. The problem was observed with Delphi XE2 Update 4 and OS X 10.7.3.

Longer description is attached below.

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I have a brand new Mac Mini (mc815z/a model - i5 2.3 GHz/2GB/500GB/Nvidia Intel HD Graphics 3000). It came with OS X Lion (10.7) which I upgraded to 10.7.3.

On my main computer (Windows 7 64-bit) runs Delphi XE2 Update 4. I've installed platform assistant from setup_paserver.zip (15.656.945 bytes). It installed Java first (Java for Mac OS X 10.7 Update 1). I'm starting PAServer via paserver.command and it seems to be working fine. PAServer says it is version 1.0.2.

Then I've set up a remote profile and it works fine (Test Connection reports success).

When I run (with debugging) a FireMonkey project (I tried various Sample projects and also fresh, minimal FireMonkey application), Delphi starts switching to the Debug layout and then freezes. PAServer reports:

Process Control Server Started pid 343 exe build Jan 15 2012

sentinelFunc 345

[The number in the second line is different every time I try to debug the program.] Nothing happens then. I can kill the PAServer with Ctrl-C and that unfreezes the Delphi. Delphi then reports error:

Debugger Assertion Failure: "obj" in ..\win32src\rproxy.cpp at line 663

Package file seems fine to me:

I'm logged on locally as a user in the Admin group.

I can start the application from /Users/primoz/Applications/Embarcadero/PAServer/scratch-dir. No problems there. Run without debugging in Delphi also works. The problem only appears if I try to debug my app.

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EDIT: This seems to be a problem with my Delphi installation. I tried the same from my notebook (also running XE2 Update 4) and it works just fine.

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EDIT: It seems that this is related to my debug desktop. When I changed debug desktop to be the same as the edit desktop, problems disappeared.

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EDIT: This problem only appears if I have 'Thread Status' window visible on the debug desktop. Furthermore, this is related to my Delphi installation - the other computer I tested on works fine with 'Thread Status' window visible.

Answer 1

This problems is related to the Thread Status window. If you experience locking while debugging on OS X, remove Thread Status from the Debug desktop.

Strangely, some XE2 Update 4 installations are working quite fine with Thread Status visible, and some are not.

Answer 2

If you Ctrl-click the app bundle you can choose "show package contents". Now you can browse for the executable itself (not the bundle). If you double click the executable it will run from a terminal window. With a bit of luck a helpful error message appears in the terminal window.

FWIW: my app works fine with 10.7.3 (not sure if I've tried it with PAServer after upgrading from 10.7.2)