DEBUGGING.md

Debugging

Use Visual Studio Code

The most simplest way is to debug using the Debug MarkText configuration. You can set breakpoints and use the debugger statement.

Prerequisites:

• Debugger for Chrome

Use Chrome Developer Tools

You can use the built-in developer tools via View -> Toggle Developer Tools in debug mode or connect via chrome://inspect using port 5858 for the main process and 8315 for the renderer process when launched via bun run dev.

Debug built application

You can use the default Electron command-line parameters to enable debug mode as described above.

$ marktext --inspect=5858 --remote-debugging-port=8315

Debug slow startup performance

Regardless of whether you are using the built or development version, you can use the node-profiler to analysis startup issues. Please follow the tool description for setup. Afterwards, launch the following commands in parallel (e.g. use three terminal windows and launch MarkText last).

$ node-profiler main
$ node-profiler renderer
$ marktext --inspect=5858 --remote-debugging-port=8315

After the successful launch of MarkText, press Ctrl+C on both node-profiler instances. The tools created two files named main.cpuprofile and renderer.cpuprofile. You can now analyse these files via Chrome Developer Tools or Visual Studio Code.

For repeatable startup timing and phase-by-phase breakdown, use the dedicated Cold Start Benchmark.