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Debugging

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MorquinDevlar edited this page Sep 24, 2026 · 4 revisions

Debugging

Debug Mode

Enable verbose debug output for drag/drop, layout, dock and package lifecycle operations:

mdw.debugMode = true

It survives MDW's own scripts re-running, so it stays on across a package update - which is what makes it useful for tracing one.

Tracing a package update

When a game package comes back from an update half-built, this is what to look at. The lifecycle prints who did what, in order:

[DEBUG] swapPackage: uninstalling MyGameUI
[DEBUG] cleanupGame: reaping everything owned by MyGameUI
[DEBUG] swapPackage: installing MyGameUI from /path/to/MyGameUI.mpackage
[DEBUG] swapPackage: MyGameUI installed, Mudlet accepted
[DEBUG] onInstall MyGameUI: registered=true isSetUp=true onReady=true
[DEBUG] onInstall MyGameUI: re-running onReady for owner MyGameUI

A swap that lands while Mudlet saves the profile shows swapPackage: Mudlet will not uninstall MyGameUI yet (saving the profile?) - retrying in 1s before the uninstall goes through, or the install of MyGameUI is queued behind a profile save after it. Both are normal and resolve by themselves within seconds.

The onInstall line is the one that usually answers the question. MDW rebuilds a reinstalled game package by re-running its onReady, and it only does that when all three hold:

  • registered - the package is in mdw.gamePackages. Your package seeds that at script-load time; if it is false, your scripts have not re-seeded it.
  • isSetUp - MDW itself is up.
  • onReady - a callback is registered under that owner key.

All three false look identical from the outside - a UI that does not come back - and are entirely different faults.

One thing the trace will not show you: re-running onReady recreates your widgets but does not restore their placement, because only a full mdw.setup() loads the layout (you will see Layout loaded from ... when it does). If your widgets exist in mdw.widgets but are not on screen, that is why - finish an update with mdw.rebuild() rather than relying on the onReady re-run alone.

Diagnostic Tools

-- Print saved layout details to main window
mdw.showLayout()

-- Print current widget state to main window
mdw.showWidgets()

-- The live layout as plain data (docks, rows, groups, floats, hidden widgets)
display(mdw.describeLayout())

Rebuilding a Broken UI

If the UI is ever half-torn - a script-editor save that re-ran MDW's scripts over a live session, say (MDW schedules its own rebuild in that case) - mdw.rebuild() or the gear menu's Rebuild UI tears everything down and builds it fresh, consumer registrations included. mdw.resetLayout() does the same after throwing the saved layout away.

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