Important Information for SpotCheck Users

Be sure to read the Welcome document. It points to a collection of HTML documentation files about SpotCheck. Also, check out the Known Problems... it may save you some trouble.

SpotCheck Bug Alerts

If SpotCheck detects an internal inconsistency, it will display a "bug in SpotCheck" alert. If you see such an alert, we recommend that you "Report a Bug" (in the File menu), then save and quit.

Application Main Class

SpotCheck has a temporary problem determining the "main" class of your application project. To make the "Build & Run Project" command work correctly, your application class (containing the "main" method) should be the first public class in the default package. In most cases, this simply means that the ".java file" containing the main class should be "read in" first... the class in question is probably the only public class in that file already.

Forcing Semantic Re-analysis

This may not make much sense until you've read the tutorial.

In SpotCheck, the results of semantic analysis should be independent of the order in which edits are performed. In other words, the state of the semantics should depend only on the state of the syntax, not on how it got to that state. However, if there are any bugs in the semantic analysis, you may find that the semantic state (visible spots, "Go To Declaration" results) seems to vary depending on the order in which you have made your changes. For instance, if you copy and immediately re-paste a section of code, and spots appear or disappear, you have found a semantic analysis bug.

If you do find such a bug, it is possible that the semantic state of your SpotCheck document has been corrupted. You can force a re-analysis by closing the document, then holding down the control key while you reopen the document. This is often a good idea after SpotCheck has crashed, as well, or if some editing operation generated a "bug in SpotCheck" alert.

Memory Requirements

SpotCheck is still fairly badly-behaved in low-memory situations. We have adjusted the RAM requirements (see "Get Info" in the Finder) to give you room enough to "control-open" a reasonably large project document and work with it for a while, with a bit of a cushion. Nonetheless, if you are working with a very large project, or a number of projects at once, you might start getting odd behavior and crashes. Check your RAM usage in "About This Macintosh"... you are probably out of memory in the SpotCheck partition. Quit SpotCheck, bump up the memory requirements, and start it again.