How to debug Android Studio Project (using NDK and JNI) line by line to see the workflow?

Issue

I was using Visual Studio and it's Debug mechanism is really useful to me. With many header and C files in 1 project, just a simple F10 it could take me a tour around from the beginning of the main() function so that I could see the sequence of the code being executed.

Now I'm jumping into Android Studio and start with a project using NDK, JNI (this project for example: https://github.com/googlesamples/android-ndk/tree/master/gles3jni), it makes me confused because there're many .java files and others C++ (native code) files and I don't know which code from which file is executed first and how it goes on.

My Question is: I'm looking for a way to debug in Android Studio line by line from the beginning to see its workflow likes how Visual Studio did but all I got from searching is how to start from a breakpoint when debugging.

I have tried putting the break point in the onCreate() method of the launcher activity and use F8 to Step Over and F7 to Step Into but it doesn't work as i expect. It keeps taking me to the super class Activity.java and GLSurafaceView.java instead of taking me to the C++ code. Is there any way to do so in Android Studio and how to do it?

I have tried with others project but the problem still remain the same. Hope someone could help.

Solution

This won't happen. Your app (the Java boilerplate code) is set to respond to many system events that happen when the user works with the app and the device on which the app is installed. If your c++ code is a piece of monolythic straightforward algorithm, you can set s breakpoint in the beginning and really follow step by step. But with Android Studio, even this process is not as easy as with Vusial Studio. To begin with, it's always remote debugging, dependent on delicate communication protocols.

This said, you can try to set up Microsoft Visual Studio as your IDE for debugging native Android code. It is surprisingly robust, and also may be more familiar to you.

Answered By - Alex Cohn