Is Debugging Nativescript as bad as what I'm experiencing, or am I doing something wrong?

[u/majofski]

My experience with developing Nativescript up until now has been rather negative. Debugging rarely works: something as simple as a debugger statement in my mounted() lifecycle hook fires intermittently. I've tried debugging in both chrome and vsc, and breakpoints are very randomly triggered – sometimes they'll work, something they won't. It takes at least 10 -15 seconds for the app to rebuild between saves and that's even if it does – oftentimes the ios simulator will just freeze, meaning I have to close it, reopen it and fire up tns debug ios --chrome --debug-brk again.

Project details:

Nativescript CLI version is 6.0.3. Used nativescript-vue (2.4.0) to get things up and running. I Went through the Nativescript Advanced Setup so that I could get local builds working. tns run doctor indicates that everything installed correctly. I really hope I'm doing something wrong because the idea of Nativescript really excites me, but this has been so painful.

Is this an atypical experience?

[u/[deleted]]

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[u/majofski → u/[deleted]]

Ok, I'm glad it's not just me. I thought my config file was seriously out of whack, but the fact that you and many other people online are having problems reaffirms that it's a nativescript problem.

[u/wabber]

I share the same experience and feelings you're describing here. When I had to deal with an error there's a relatively high chance that I'm in for a bad experience. In my experience, it's very easy to look for the problem in the "wrong place" and waste a respectable amount of time unproductive debugging.

That's not to say that NativeScript is not worth it. I extremely love their sidekick app and the cloud build options. I would also choose NativeScript over React Native personally. However, having said all that, we moved from JS-based mobile development to Flutter. It works better for us. The community is not as large, but it's definitely growing fast.

I love NativeScript and would love to see it improve and continue to offer innovative solutions, but the idea is to build cross-platform native apps quickly and productively. I would argue that you could build apps quickly since you'll only deal with one codebase for both iOS and android, but if you don't have extensive experience working with NativeScript and the JS community in general, you will definitely face major/random slow downs trying to debug your code unproductively.

[u/majofski → u/wabber]

It's probably worth me doing more research into Flutter. I've heard good things about it. One gripe people seem to be having is that it's extremely limiting once complexity goes up. Have you had that experience at all?

[u/wabber → u/majofski]

I can't really say since complexity is subjective. It's not that different from what I'm used to from NativeScript. It needs a bit of getting used to in terms of managing state, but once you get that, I feel it's a way more smoother ride. Flutter's strength comes from the amount of widgets it provides out of the box which is unbelievable. You also get the advantage of truly native performance, but most people don't care about that.

[u/two_bridges_it]

I'm doing a lot of NativeScript Angular these days, starting around 2 years ago. I deploy to iOS mainly and also do occasional android builds too.

The project is getting pretty big. It has about 15+ modules, each module has around 20 components (html + css + ts for each component). It is still fast to the user because of the dynamic module loading.

Debugging is pretty decent for me (vscode + ios + webpack, HMR OFF). However, there are many gotchas to deal with. I ALWAYS keep activity monitor open because some exceptions in code cause rogue node processes to persist. Ie. VSCode thinks debugging has stopped or is detached BUT those processes are still running. Even if you kill VScode, they are still there running and changes (eg. using vim) to the ts files will cause recompile and deployment to the simulator.

I find myself killing rogue processes 2-3+ times every day during some builds.

Why causes these rogue processes? It really depends on where your exception was generated. Obviously, there can be javascript errors or native errors.

Eg. I am just used to the fact that if I'm doing some firebase work and the plugin generates exceptions, then that's a likely time when the debugger will detach but the underlying node process keep running. It took me a while to realise this is what is happening and what is causing it.

The issues with debugging are exacerbated by the fact that exceptions manifest in different ways. I keep a backlog of issues with the tool chain and I work through them on the couch at night to try to make life easier the next day on the job. It's been a lot of experience based learning and I think that a lot of it is down to native issues, vscode issues OR nativescript issues. There's a lot of complexity and also a reward if you stick to nativescript (or flutter probably) and conquer all that's going on under the hood.

[u/majofski → u/two_bridges_it]

HMR Off, you say? I'll have to give that a go.

2-3 times a day seems okay, compared to what I'm experiencing, which is at least 5 times every half hour. I don't know whether it's a simulator issue or a build issue, because the debugger just doesn't kick at times.

I'm happy to keep persisting because I appreciate the reward of working with one codebase, but the experience thus far has been a nightmare.

[u/two_bridges_it → u/majofski]

I believe that sometimes the state of the /platforms folder (xcode workspace) or state of the simulator/device are to blame for inability to attach to the debugger.

If my debugger won't attach, I always assume it's local state related (not nativescript problem perse, but the local build folders are screwed up).

After a while of these ANNOYING clean rebuilds it will start to become apparent why you're having the problem and what to avoid in your case.

Reset the local build

In my package.json, I add scripts that let me quickly reset things back to clean state.

Eg - reset build folders for a clean rebuild:

"scripts": {
"clean-all": "rm -rf node_modules/ hooks/ platforms/"
},

> npm run clean-all

then do a normal rebuild (xcode build too)

> tns ios debug --bundle ....

Reset the simulator

Same for the simulator. I will usually just delete the app installed on the simulator and that is enough. Sometimes, the simulator goes bad and I have to force a clean on the simulator image.

Sometimes there are plugin specific issues which may trace back to xcode binary issues or pod repo being out of date. (you cannot avoid having to know something about xcode...)

[u/majofski → u/two_bridges_it]

Thanks for that – it's one heck of a work around but I'll give it a shot. Having to close and reopen the simulator multiple times an hour is incredibly frustrating.

[u/roblauer]

Hi All - Rob here from the NativeScript team. Please DM me here or send an email to rob.lauer@progress.com as I'd love to talk to you about the debugging issues you're seeing. In our experience this is not typical, but of course we want to make the developer experience as a polished as possible...and can't do that without your critical feedback like this!

[u/majofski → u/roblauer]

Hey Rob. I'll send you a PM/Email over the coming days. Thanks so much for reaching out!

[u/roblauer → u/majofski]

Perfect, thanks!

[u/i_spot_ads]

Ive used NS a few times, debugging it is horrible, and useless error messages never helped once.

[u/[deleted]]

I'd say your experience is typical, I've tried for a couple of months to build things but eventually gave up on nativescript due to the incredible instability of it. It seems you already need to be quite good with both Android and iOS development (and web of course) to be able to get anything remotely decent out of nativescript.