Android Question Debug menu disabled

[jccraig]

I've developed several small experimental apps this week, loving B4A with every step. However, yesterday some probably related symptoms showed up and I'm stuck. The Debug menu item is always grayed out, and my apps now refuse to run on my smartphone in Debug mode. I created a very simple app, just a Msgbox() in Activity_Create, with the same results. My apps install and run fine when in Release mode, but in Debug mode they appear to compile, install, and then nothing happens. How do I re-enabled my Debug menu item? I watch carefully, and it never goes black, just stays gray, no matter what I'm doing. Is this a known issue? Did I clobber something? Is there a Registry setting to clean up? Is there a simple fix for me to try? I ask about the Registry because when I start a completely fresh run of B4A after rebooting my computer, even the simplest of apps that always worked in Debug mode before now refuses to work. So it seems something external to B4A, such as a Registry setting perhaps... Win 10, B4A 5.50, registered version.

 

[Erel]

The debug menu should be disabled. It gets enabled when the debugger connects to the device.

Try to manually uninstall the app from the device.

Is there any error message in the IDE when you run in debug mode?

 

[jccraig]

Thanks for your help Erel. I'm new to B4A, so I might have missed something. I've been using F2 to connect to the device, and that appeared to always work okay. Even with the problem I did see "Connected" on my smartphone, and the compiled program did appear to install each time I tried it. But that's where it would stop, with the Debug menu still grayed out and the program not starting up on my phone. It's possible there was an error message that I was missing. I struggled with getting the Debugging mode to work, instead of just the Release mode, for quite a while. However, after posting the message above, I rebooted both my computer and my Droid again, and the problem did go away. I'll keep my eyes on it and see if any pattern shows up if the problem suddenly returns again. For now, it appears that a reboot of everything solved my problem, for whatever reason.

Oh, at one point while having the problem I did uninstall the program from my phone, without that helping. I tried Release mode and the program ran fine on my phone, but when I went back to Debug mode it was consistently a no-go. Always the same symptom, even with a fresh load of B4A and the simplest program I could try, which was just to add a MsgBox line in Activity_Create. F2 would connect okay, the program would compile, prompt me to install on my phone, then no startup of the program itself, and the Debug menu item plus the debugging icons near it always stayed grayed out.

Let's assume this was a one-time-only problem for now, but if I see it happening again I'll dig into the messages in more detail and report back what I can find.
Thanks, John