Debugging Delphi Apps on Android 8.1 Works

by Dec 14, 2017

When Google introduced Android 8 this summer, they increased the platform security but happened to block socket access to the debugger, basically preventing debugging applications on a device. You'd see the error message "Can't open socket: Permission denied." as reported also at https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-18992. The issue was not a change in out debugger support, but a problem at the operating system level. You can read some of the discussion here: https://github.com/android-ndk/ndk/issues/447

Now the good news is Google fixed the issue (as indicated in the thread above). We tested it on previews and it seemed fine. Now Google has shipped Android Oreo 8.1, I for it for my Nexus 5X device this morning, installed it, and I can now debug a Delphi application as usual. I captured an image of the program stopped at a breakpoint below. 

Now this is not related to 10.2.2 in any way, as the change was only on the Android side, not the RAD Studio side. What we have fixed at our end is the display of the device name as target, but that wasn't a really big issue anyway.