Welcome to remote debugging 101. REALbasic has the easiest remote debugging system of any IDE, and we'll go over all you'll ever need to know about it.
The Remote Debugger Stub:
This is the application that is responsible for all communications with the IDE. You need to run this application on a remote machine to be able to do any remote debugging. Once you have the application running, let's go over some of the different options you have.
* Machine Name: this is the human readable string that you would like your machine to be known as. It can be any value.
* Listening Port: this is the port that all incoming TCP connections should be routed to. Most people will want to leave this at it's default value. If you have a firewall, you may wish to change this value (more on firewalls later).
* Public Debugger Stub: setting this value to true will allow anyone on your local network to automatically discover that you are running a debugger stub.
* Log Access Information: setting this value to true will log access to your computer so you can see when someone accessed the remote debugger and from what IP.
* If you are running on a Macintosh, you will see two radio button (that do not appear on Windows or Linux). Setting one of those radio buttons values will determine what type of application's the IDE will build. For example, if you are running on OS 9, you can choose to have all Classic applications debugging, or all Carbon applications.
If you have changed any of the above values, you must hit the apply button in order for them to take effect.
The REALbasic IDE:
This is where you will be remote debugging from. You will notice a new menu item in the Debug menu called "Run Remote". The first time you run RB, there will only be one item in there called Setup. If you select that menu, it will bring you to the debugging pane in the preferences dialog. This allows you to setup what remote debugging stubs you are interested in running on. Clicking the Add button will bring up a window that will auto-discover any remote debugging stubs on your local network. If you wish to use a stub that is not running on your local network, that is fine as well. Just type the machine name and IP address in the edit fields and hit ok. Once you have added the stubs you wish to debug to, hit ok to close the preference dialog. Now you're ready to remote debug!
Now, when you go back to the Run Remote menu, you will see the remote debugger stubs you just added in the preferences dialog. You can use either the menu shortcut, or select any of the machines in the list. Selecting a machine that is not listed as the first item will switch the remote debugging shortcut key to the selected item. Have fun remote debugging!
About Firewalls:
In order for all this magic to work, you will need to open two UDP ports in your firewall. You must allow both incoming and outgoing traffic to ports 44553 and 44554. You can pick the port that you want all TCP traffic to come in on, but these ports must be open to UDP traffic for the debugger to work.
