
Show HN: Spark Inspector, a run-time debugging tool for iOS apps - bengotow
http://static.sparkinspector.com/
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skyebook
Wow, in about 4 minutes I was able to track down a UI positioning bug with the
UINavigationBar that has been nagging us for two months.

Buying 5 copies now.

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jpsim
Nice work, but certainly no replacement for PonyDebugger[0] with SuperDB[1].
Plus, they're both FOSS.

Sure, those don't have support for NSNotifications, but I've found it's best
to avoid those as much as possible anyway (essentially like a super GOTO).

[0] <https://github.com/square/PonyDebugger> [1]
<http://shopify.github.io/superdb/>

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bengotow
I agree—PonyDebugger is great. I think it's less trivial to use, though. My
goal with the Spark Inspector (and it's setup assistant, which makes all of
the project changes for you) is to bring down the difficulty and provide an
experience on par with Apple's built-in developer tools. I'd love to integrate
FScript into the app so you can issue SuperDB-style commands. I think I'm
gonna try to auto-convert into their NextStep syntax so people don't have to
worry about it, though - we'll see how it goes :-)

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jbrennan
Author of SuperDB here. I think you should be able to embed most of SuperDB
itself directly in Spark Inspector. I'm not sure how you're doing runtime
inspection, but SuperDB already has most of the underlying stuff already
hooked up. I think they'd make a lovely pair!

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nirvanatikku
Excited to play with this!

JFYI Chrome (26.0.1410.65) is bugging out all over the video element as I
scroll: <http://bit.ly/19iUieq>. Firefox doesn't support the mime type.
Safari/Canary etc are fine. I'd suggest just posting the video to YouTube and
embedding it using the iframe player, as it's so captivating.

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bengotow
Thanks for the heads up! I'll see what I can do - I noticed that in Chrome but
I figured it was just me...

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rgbrgb
Here's hoping Apple buys these guys soon. Is it really just an inspector or
can you get your changes to be reflected in the code?

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jonfriskics
You can make some display/position changes in the inspector that are reflected
live in the Simulator, but I haven't found a way to turn that into any
permanent change.

I've been thinking of it as a Firebug-style tool for iOS.

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orta
<http://mireus.com/xrayeditor/> <\- does this

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jcampbell1
Wow this is great. I will very likely buy the app when the trial is over.

One thing that was strage is the app asked for my contacts. I think it was due
to something in the crash reporting. If you want my email address so you can
provide support, that is great, but asking for access to my contacts turns a
good thing into a bad impression.

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bengotow
@jcampbell - I just installed the app in a new user account and it looks like
that is caused by the crash reporter trying to get your email address.
Definitely a bad experience - I'll see if I can fix it.

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shwonkbc
I'd love to try it, but it only runs on OS X 10.8 or later.

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kranner
Any chance of a port to 10.7? I'd have bought it last week (when I first found
it) if it hadn't been 10.8 only.

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bengotow
I'll try to change the deployment target and see if I can make it 10.7
compatible - shouldn't be too hard. I actually went 10.8-only because Apple
usually requires the latest version of Mac OS for iOS development, so I
figured most developers would be on 10.8!

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kranner
Excellent, thanks very much. I might be the only laggard left. I'm now
following @SparkInspector on twitter to keep an eye out for 10.7 support.

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jscheel
Great job, this is and incredible leap for iOS development. I foresee this
becoming an essential tool in a lot of developers workflow.

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gbrhaz
Looks really nice - I like it. I did have one small issue though: I had Spark
Inspector add itself to one of my projects that has two targets, and it added
its frameworks to the wrong target. Not a huge issue, but perhaps something
for others to be aware of.

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obscurebug
This tool is slick! It should be part of Xcode. It lets you peel back every
layer of every item in your UI and also monitors the notifications - all in
real time.

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gfosco
I heard about this a few days ago on Twitter and immediately purchased it.
Absolutely incredible tool, great presentation, and a price I could not
resist.

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jonfriskics
This tool is pretty amazing. I first heard about it last week, bought it after
using it for 10 minutes, and now it's a solid part of my workflow.

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isaacwaller
Does anybody know of a similar tool for Android?

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bengotow
To my knowledge there isn't one. I talked to a friend of mine that works on
the Android core, and he said it'd be a challenge to do without continuously
polling the entire view stack for changes. Objective-C's runtime makes it easy
to hook into methods and watch for changes, but Java isn't so flexible. He
said it'd probably require a custom build of the Android OS to do well. But
I'd love for both of us to be proven wrong!

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tel
Does this exist for HTML?

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gregorkas
Yes, every browser has an inspector that lets you change elements in realtime.
Right click somewhere on the page and select "Inspect element".

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tel
Sorry, I'm aware of that. Thanks for suggesting it, though. I'm in particular
interested in the 3D view.

