Windows log file

[trypodman]

Hi, I'm experiencing a crash on ROM boot and am trying to debug. However, it doesn't seem like 0.9.5 has any log output on windows when I run from command prompt. Is there a log file written anywhere on disk I can access, or any way to force log output? Thanks!

[RSDuck]

apparently you can run it from the console with melonDS > log (surprised that actually works).

[nadiaholmquist]

The log probably won't have much useful information though – you would need a debugger if it's actually crashing.

[trypodman]

Thank you both for the suggestions!

I tried redirecting the program's output to a file, but unfortunately this doesn't work. It appears that melonds executable launches a child process causing the initial process to exit early with no log output.

@nadiaholmquist I'll try this, thank you. Do you suggest any debugger in particular?

I just tried 0.8.3 since it has log output and surprisingly it's working. I notice that it ships required DLLs alongside the exe, so my best guess is that I'm missing a runtime dependency for 0.9.5.

[RSDuck]

melonDS 0.9.5 should be completely statically linked. From 0.8.3 to 0.9.5 the frontend was completely replaced. Redirection of the log output worked fine for me with the official Windows binary of 0.9.5. If the window doesn't even open, it probably crashes for you before there's a single log message made.

[trypodman]

Strange. The window opens, but the exe process seems to exit immediately (which is why I assumed that it spawns a child process or something). I'm able to use the application up until it crashes when I try to boot a ROM, but there's no console output.

Here's a screenshot to better visualize the behaviour I'm seeing:

(the resulting log file is empty)

I've confirmed that I'm using the 0.9.5 windows build from https://melonds.kuribo64.net/downloads.php. I've tried on both windows 10 and 11 and see the same behaviour.

Edit: I also just downloaded the build from the github releases section to verify that it's the same file, and the checksums match

[RSDuck]

looks like it only works when running from mingw shell.