FLEX vs Stetho Comparison | StackShare

Overview

FLEX

Stacks15

Followers13

Votes1

Stetho

Stacks44

Followers41

Votes0

GitHub Stars12.7K

Forks1.1K

FLEX vs Stetho: What are the differences?

FLEX: In-app debugging tool for iOS, inspect and modify views in the hierarchy. FLEX (Flipboard Explorer) is a set of in-app debugging and exploration tools for iOS development. When presented, FLEX shows a toolbar that lives in a window above your application. From this toolbar, you can view and modify nearly every piece of state in your running application; Stetho: A new debugging platform for Android, built by Facebook. Stetho is a sophisticated debug bridge for Android applications. When enabled, developers have access to the Chrome Developer Tools feature natively part of the Chrome desktop browser. Developers can also choose to enable the optional dumpapp tool which offers a powerful command-line interface to application internals.

FLEX and Stetho can be categorized as "Mobile Runtime Inspector" tools.

Some of the features offered by FLEX are:

Inspect and modify views in the hierarchy.
See the properties and ivars on any object.
Dynamically modify many properties and ivars.

On the other hand, Stetho provides the following key features:

Chrome DevTools UI
Network inspection
Database inspection

FLEX and Stetho are both open source tools. It seems that Stetho with 11.2K GitHub stars and 1.03K forks on GitHub has more adoption than FLEX with 10.5K GitHub stars and 1.2K GitHub forks.

Detailed Comparison

FLEX	Stetho
FLEX (Flipboard Explorer) is a set of in-app debugging and exploration tools for iOS development. When presented, FLEX shows a toolbar that lives in a window above your application. From this toolbar, you can view and modify nearly every piece of state in your running application.	Stetho is a sophisticated debug bridge for Android applications. When enabled, developers have access to the Chrome Developer Tools feature natively part of the Chrome desktop browser. Developers can also choose to enable the optional dumpapp tool which offers a powerful command-line interface to application internals.
Inspect and modify views in the hierarchy.;See the properties and ivars on any object.;Dynamically modify many properties and ivars.;Dynamically call instance and class methods.;Access any live object via a scan of the heap.;View the file system within your app's sandbox.;Explore all classes in your app and linked systems frameworks (public and private).;Quickly access useful objects such as [UIApplication sharedApplication], the app delegate, the root view controller on the key window, and more.;Dynamically view and modify NSUserDefaults values.	Chrome DevTools UI;Network inspection;Database inspection; dumpapp
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 12.7K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 1.1K
Stacks 15	Stacks 44
Followers 13	Followers 41
Votes 1	Votes 0
Pros & Cons
Pros 1 True Native iOS Builds	No community feedback yet

What are some alternatives to FLEX, Stetho?

PonyDebugger

PonyDebugger is a remote debugging toolset. It is a client library and gateway server combination that uses Chrome Developer Tools on your browser to debug your application's network traffic and managed object contexts. To use PonyDebugger, you must implement the client in your application and connect it to the gateway server. There is currently an iOS client and the gateway server.

Reveal App

Reveal brings the power of tools like Firebug and Web Inspector to iOS developers. See your application's view hierarchy at runtime with advanced 2D and 3D visualisations. Debug view layout and rendering problems in seconds.

Facebook Sonar

Sonar is a platform for debugging mobile apps on iOS and Android. Visualize, inspect, and control your apps from a simple desktop interface. Use Sonar as is or extend it using the plugin API.