jdb on Windows: connecting to the android emulator

I’ve been trying to connect

jdb

to the android emulator for a little while, and have been met repeatedly with:

jdb -sourcepath ./src -attach localhost:8700

java.io.IOException: shmemBase_attach failed: The system cannot find the file specified
        at com.sun.tools.jdi.SharedMemoryTransportService.attach0(Native Method)
        at com.sun.tools.jdi.SharedMemoryTransportService.attach(SharedMemoryTransportService.java:90)
        at com.sun.tools.jdi.GenericAttachingConnector.attach(GenericAttachingConnector.java:98)
        at com.sun.tools.jdi.SharedMemoryAttachingConnector.attach(SharedMemoryAttachingConnector.java:45)
        at com.sun.tools.example.debug.tty.VMConnection.attachTarget(VMConnection.java:358)
        at com.sun.tools.example.debug.tty.VMConnection.open(VMConnection.java:168)
        at com.sun.tools.example.debug.tty.Env.init(Env.java:64)
        at com.sun.tools.example.debug.tty.TTY.main(TTY.java:1010)

Fatal error:
Unable to attach to target VM.

Not so great. So: it appears that jdb on Windows defaults to a shared memory connection with a remote VM. Can we specify a different connector? Turns out we can:

C:\Users\tim\Documents\Android\Life>jdb –sourcepath .\src -connect com.sun.jdi.SocketAttach:hostname=localhost,port=8700

Set uncaught java.lang.Throwable
Set deferred uncaught java.lang.Throwable
Initializing jdb ...
> 

Beforehand you need to do some setup -- for example, see this set of useful details on setting up a non-eclipse debugger. It includes a good tip for setting your initial breakpoint -- create or edit a

jdb.ini

file in your home directory, with content like:

stop at com.alembic.life.standalone.Life:14

and they'll get loaded and deferred until connection.