Here are some tips and tricks for troubleshooting problems using the ACTF validation componentry.
If you didn't find a solution above, check the list of known problems.
Use the .options file for obtaining debug information on ACTF. Run Eclipse in debug mode by launching the eclipse.exe application with the debug switch. This switch takes the fully-qualified path to a .options file shipped with ACTF, located in: <ECLIPSE_HOME>/plugins/org.eclipse.actf.core_0.3.0/.options.
For example:
eclipse -debug C:\test.eclipse.312\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.actf.core_0.3.0\.options
The .options file may include two basic sets of parameters.
The first set of parameters (present by default) end with /level, which indicate the granularity of the debug information. Level 5 will produce the least amount of information while level 0 produces the most information. Level 1 is usually sufficient for diagnosing problems in running the ACTF validation processes.
Optionally, keys ending in /stream (not present by default) tell ACTF where to write debug information. Either the path to a file (in which the directories already exist) or 'stdout' or 'stderr' (for indicating standard out or standard error, respectively) can be specified. A file is typically preferred since debug information is quite verbose and may not fit within the console buffer. By default, one file for each core plugin is placed in the default Java working directory ( see java.io.tmpdir).
For example, if you wanted the org.eclipse.actf.core plug-in to write it's file out to your temp directory part of your .options file might look like this:
org.eclipse.actf.core/debug = true org.eclipse.actf.core/debug/trace = true org.eclipse.actf.core/debug/trace/stream = c:/temp/actfcore.out org.eclipse.actf.core/debug/trace/level = 0