Android ships with a debugging tool called the Dalvik Debug Monitor Server (DDMS), which provides port-forwarding services, screen capture on the device, thread and heap information on the device, logcat, process, and radio state information, incoming call and SMS spoofing, location data spoofing, and more. This page provides a modest discussion of DDMS features; it is not an exhaustive exploration of all the features and capabilities.

Running DDMS

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DDMS is integrated into Eclipse and is also shipped in the tools/ directory of the SDK. DDMS works with both the emulator and a connected device. If both are connected and running simultaneously, DDMS defaults to the emulator.

• From Eclipse: Click Window > Open Perspective > Other... > DDMS.
• From the command line: Type ddms (or ./ddms on Mac/Linux) from the tools/directory.

How DDMS Interacts with a Debugger

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On Android, every application runs in its own process, each of which runs in its own virtual machine (VM). Each VM exposes a unique port that a debugger can attach to.

When DDMS starts, it connects to adb. When a device is connected, a VM monitoring service is created between adb and DDMS, which notifies DDMS when a VM on the device is started or terminated. Once a VM is running, DDMS retrieves the VM's process ID (pid), via adb, and opens a connection to the VM's debugger, through the adb daemon (adbd) on the device. DDMS can now talk to the VM using a custom wire protocol.

DDMS assigns a debugging port to each VM on the device. Typically, DDMS assigns port 8600 for the first debuggable VM, the next on 8601, and so on. When a debugger connects to one of these ports, all traffic is forwarded to the debugger from the associated VM. You can only attach a single debugger to a single port, but DDMS can handle multiple, attached debuggers.

By default, DDMS also listens on another debugging port, the DDMS "base port" (8700, by default). The base port is a port forwarder, which can accept VM traffic from any debugging port and forward it to the debugger on port 8700. This allows you to attach one debugger to port 8700, and debug all the VMs on a device. The traffic that is forwarded is determined by the currently selected process in the DDMS Devices view.

The following screenshot shows a typical DDMS screen in Eclipse. If you are starting DDMS from the command line, the screen is slightly different, but much of the functionality is identical. Notice that the highlighted process,com.android.email, that is running in the emulator has the debugging port 8700 assigned to it as well as 8606. This signifies that DDMS is currently forwarding port 8606 to the static debugging port of 8700.

Figure 1. Screenshot of DDMS

If you are not using Eclipse and ADT, read Configuring your IDE to attach to the debugging port, for more information on attaching your debugger.

Tip: You can set a number of DDMS preferences in File > Preferences. Preferences are saved to$HOME/.android/ddms.cfg.

Known debugging issues with Dalvik
Debugging an application in the Dalvik VM should work the same as it does in other VMs. However, when single-stepping out of synchronized code, the "current line" cursor may jump to the last line in the method for one step.

Using DDMS

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The following sections describe how to use DDMS and the various tabs and panes that are part of the DDMS GUI. The Eclipse version and the command line version have minor UI differences, but the same functionality. For information on running DDMS, see the previous section in this document,  Running DDMS.

Viewing heap usage for a process

DDMS allows you to view how much heap memory a process is using. This information is useful in tracking heap usage at a certain point of time during the execution of your application.

To view heap usage for a process:

1. In the Devices tab, select the process that you want to see the heap information for.
2. Click the Update Heap button to enable heap information for the process.
3. In the Heap tab, click Cause GC to invoke garbage collection, which enables the collection of heap data. When the operation completes, you will see a group of object types and the memory that has been allocated for each type. You can click Cause GC again to refresh the data.
4. Click on an object type in the list to see a bar graph that shows the number of objects allocated for a particular memory size in bytes.

Tracking memory allocation of objects

DDMS provides a feature to track objects that are being allocated to memory and to see which classes and threads are allocating the objects. This allows you to track, in real time, where objects are being allocated when you perform certain actions in your application. This information is valuable for assessing memory usage that can affect application performance.

To track memory allocation of objects:

1. In the Devices tab, select the process that you want to enable allocation tracking for.
2. In the Allocation Tracker tab, click the Start Tracking button to begin allocation tracking. At th