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Android Build a Simple Android App (retired 2014) Interrogating the App Debugging: Troubleshooting Line by Line

Debugger not working!

I'm trying to debug my Crystal Ball app and when I click the step over button or the resume button it says "Source not found". I'm not really sure what to do. Is anyone able to help me with this problem?

1 Answer

Hey Jordan Peterson, that's pretty common when debugging. While debugging, you can step through the code as it's executed, even code that you didn't write, like other libraries or even the Android framework code itself.

When you see the "Sources not found" message, the IDE (e.g. Android Studio or Eclipse) is telling you it doesn't know about the actual source code for the file you have open (and is likely displaying a stub of the class with the structure of the class and its functions, but not the function definitions).

If this file belongs to a library and you only have the jar, you might not be able to do anything about it. But, in other cases, like with the Android framework code or a library where you have the actual source code on your computer somewhere, you can "attach sources" and browse to the location on your computer where they exist and select them. This tells your IDE where to look when trying to display the source code for a given file.

An example of the "Sources not found" when debugging and stepping through code that the IDE doesn't know the sources for:

Sources not found

Thank you! It's working now.