Outputting trace statements outside Flash/Flex Builder in OS X

For quite a while, I have been using the Terminal to output trace statements while I’m viewing Flash content in the browser. It works great, but you need to follow a few steps to set it up. After I got my new laptop, I needed to enable the Terminal to do this and I searched the web for instructions since I had forgotten how to do it. I did find what I was looking for, but I also found a pretty neat application for OS X called FlashTracerX that does exactly what I wanted. Here’s what you need to know:

If you want to use the Terminal:

  1. Make sure you have a Debugger version of the Flash Player installed.
  2. Create a txt file, name it flashlog.txt and place it here: /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash Player/Logs/flashlog.txt
  3. Create a mm.cfg file and add the following code:
    ErrorReportingEnable=1
    TraceOutputFileEnable=1
    MaxWarnings=0 
    You can also download the     mm.cfg     here. If you want to change the maximum number of warnings, open it with TextEdit and     make the change.
  4. Place a copy of the mm.cfg in the following locations:
    /Library/Application Support/Macromedia/mm.cfg
    /Users/YourUserName/mm.cfg
  5. Open the terminal and type in:
    tail -f /Users/YourUserName/Library/Preferences/Macromedia/Flash\ Player/Logs/flashlog.txt

To use FlashTracerX by Brandon Meyer click here and download the application. Follow the instructions provided in the website.

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