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I want to debug an Android application using Eclipse. I have extracted from the apk the Java code (using dex2jar and then jd-gui), also I have created in Eclipse a new Java project from existing code, but now I'm stucked because I have lots of unresolved imports (guess it is because there is no Google's API in this project) and don't know how to debug. In fact I don't even know if it is possible... but debug from smali code is a pain (even more if you have no idea of smali :D).

Anyone of you know if this is possible? Any guidelines?

Thank you.

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  • Even u r using dex2jar + jd-gui, u will probably facing pains of messy variable names in most circumstances. So first step is always changing the variable names to normal. Commented Nov 20, 2012 at 11:48
  • Do you want to really debug the program via Eclipse (e.g. step-by-step execution, variable inspection...) or is "debugging" more understanding from your point of view? Commented Nov 20, 2012 at 12:57
  • @Robert I want the classic Eclipse debugging, setting breakpoints on the Java code and be able of, as you said, step-by-step execution, data inspection and all the stuff that Eclipse debugger would let me do. Commented Nov 20, 2012 at 14:09

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Debugging via Eclipse like step-by-step execution requires AFAIR debugging information to be present in the APK to be debugged.

Furthermore even if the APK contains debugging information you are running into the problem that most Java decompiler don't produce code where the decompiled source lines matches the source lines marked in the the debugging info of the APK. Hence you may be able to debug the App but Eclipse can not show you the correct line number.

This is already a problem when using jd-gui in regular non-Android projects. I assume in Android projects the situation is even worse.

Hence I see only one way for debugging an app you onl have the decompiled code for:

Fix the decompiled code (hopefully it was decompiled fully - sometimes classes are just ignored because there was a decompiling error) and the recompile it to an APK with debugging information. This is as far as I know the only way.

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Thanks for the info, resuming, it is not easy to do what I want. The AndroidManifest.xml file has android:debuggable="true". Another question, when you have to debug an apk, what you should do?, debug from the smali code? (dynamic analysis), just an static analysis from the Java code? mix of both?.

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