no Objective-C description available - Why? - objective-c

Question

I really have no idea why on this particular project my debugger is extremely 'disabled'.
For example I'll want to get info on an object:
(lldb) po [_model dictionaryValue]
[no Objective-C description available]
I'm wondering why this is. It's making debugging extremely difficult and it's only on this current project. I'm guessing I've done something to the settings at some point. It's on almost any po someObject I try to inspect. The variables in scope can be seen in the pane to the left of the debug console however.
I'm on Xcode 5, I have Cocoapods in my project, and it's a Unit Testing Target.
Any insights or any way to fix this?
Update:
For clarity, part of how the test case is implemented:
#interface WWCGateModelTests : XCTestCase
{
WWCGate *_model;
}
#end
#implementation WWCGateModelTests
- (void)setUp
{
[super setUp];
// Put setup code here; it will be run once, before each test case.
_model = [WWCGate loadGateModelWithIdentifier: kGateName]; // defined, not nil
}
- (void)tearDown
{
[super tearDown];
NSError *error = nil;
[_model saveModelOrError:&error];
// Breakpoint here. po _model does not print the model.
// This has been possible with other projects... po error will print
// nil to the console. How is an ivar not in scope?
}

Answer 1

This is likely happening because Unit Testing Targets typically are set up to run with "Release" configurations. "Release" configurations are ones where the debugging symbols have been stripped or optimized away.
I suspect you won't have this problem if you make certain you're running with a non-optimized, symbols-in-place Debug version of your app. You can change that in Xcode's scheme editor (e.g. when doing "Test" or "Profile", use the "Debug" configuration).

Answer 2

Are you sure you aren't using it on primitive types? Use p intVariable on those.
Every object will respond to description by at least printing class and memory address.

Answer 3

I've tracked down the issue (but haven't fixed it fully yet). It has to do with the Mantle Framework. In its description method it wants to spit out the contents of an NSDictionary that it generates at that point. There's something wrong with the way I set up my model I believe so creating this dictionary (based probably on how I configured some property) is basically failing.
I overrode the description method to return a standard description:
- (NSString*)description
{
return [NSString stringWithFormat:#"<%#: %p>", self.class, self];
}
and everything is fine and good again on planet Earth. ;-)
Thanks to those who were particularly patient. A more detailed discussion about this issue can be found at UPDATE 3 of the following post: http://horseshoe7.wordpress.com/2013/05/26/hands-on-with-the-mantle-model-framework/