lix/doc/manual/rl-next/stack-traces.md
jade 19e0ce2c03 main: log stack traces for std::terminate
These stack traces kind of suck for the reasons mentioned on the
CppTrace page here (no symbols for inline functions is a major one):
https://github.com/jeremy-rifkin/cpptrace

I would consider using CppTrace if it were packaged, but to be honest, I
think that the more reasonable option is actually to move entirely to
out-of-process crash handling and symbolization.

The reason for this is that if you want to generate anything of
substance on SIGSEGV or really any deadly signal, you are stuck in
async-signal-safe land, which is not a place to be trying to run a
symbolizer. LLVM does it anyway, probably carefully, and chromium *can*
do it on debug builds but in general uses crashpad:
https://source.chromium.org/chromium/chromium/src/+/main:base/debug/stack_trace_posix.cc;l=974;drc=82dff63dbf9db05e9274e11d9128af7b9f51ceaa;bpv=1;bpt=1

However, some stack traces are better than *no* stack traces when we get
mystery exceptions falling out the bottom of the program. I've also
promoted the path for "mystery exceptions falling out the bottom of the
program" to hard crash and generate a core dump because although there's
been some months since the last one of these, these are nonetheless
always *atrociously* diagnosed.

We can't improve the crash handling further until either we use Crashpad
(which involves more C++ deps, no thanks) or we put in the ostensibly
work in progress Rust minidump infrastructure, in which case we need to
finish full support for Rust in libutil first.

Sample report:

Lix crashed. This is a bug. We would appreciate if you report it at https://git.lix.systems/lix-project/lix/issues with the following information included:

Exception: std::runtime_error: lol
Stack trace:
 0# nix::printStackTrace() in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/../libutil/liblixutil.so
 1# 0x000073C9862331F2 in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/../libmain/liblixmain.so
 2# 0x000073C985F2E21A in /nix/store/p44qan69linp3ii0xrviypsw2j4qdcp2-gcc-13.2.0-lib/lib/libstdc++.so.6
 3# 0x000073C985F2E285 in /nix/store/p44qan69linp3ii0xrviypsw2j4qdcp2-gcc-13.2.0-lib/lib/libstdc++.so.6
 4# nix::handleExceptions(std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&, std::function<void ()>) in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/../libmain/liblixmain.so
 5# 0x00005CF65B6B048B in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/nix
 6# 0x000073C985C8810E in /nix/store/dbcw19dshdwnxdv5q2g6wldj6syyvq7l-glibc-2.39-52/lib/libc.so.6
 7# __libc_start_main in /nix/store/dbcw19dshdwnxdv5q2g6wldj6syyvq7l-glibc-2.39-52/lib/libc.so.6
 8# 0x00005CF65B610335 in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/nix

Change-Id: I1a9f6d349b617fd7145a37159b78ecb9382cb4e9
2024-09-25 14:03:45 -07:00

1.5 KiB

synopsis cls category credits
Some Lix crashes now produce reporting instructions and a stack trace, then abort
1854
Improvements jade

Lix, being a C++ program, can crash in a few kinds of ways. It can obviously do a memory access violation, which will generate a core dump and thus be relatively debuggable. But, worse, it could throw an unhandled exception, and, in the past, we would just show the message but not where it comes from, in spite of this always being a bug, since we expect all such errors to be translated to a Lix specific error. Now the latter kind of bug should print reporting instructions, a rudimentary stack trace and (depending on system configuration) generate a core dump.

Sample output:

Lix crashed. This is a bug. We would appreciate if you report it along with what caused it at https://git.lix.systems/lix-project/lix/issues with the following information included:

Exception: std::runtime_error: test exception
Stack trace:
 0# nix::printStackTrace() in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/../libutil/liblixutil.so
 1# 0x000073C9862331F2 in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/../libmain/liblixmain.so
 2# 0x000073C985F2E21A in /nix/store/p44qan69linp3ii0xrviypsw2j4qdcp2-gcc-13.2.0-lib/lib/libstdc++.so.6
 3# 0x000073C985F2E285 in /nix/store/p44qan69linp3ii0xrviypsw2j4qdcp2-gcc-13.2.0-lib/lib/libstdc++.so.6
 4# nix::handleExceptions(std::__cxx11::basic_string<char, std::char_traits<char>, std::allocator<char> > const&, std::function<void ()>) in /home/jade/lix/lix3/build/src/nix/../libmain/liblixmain.so
 ...