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code.google.com is obsolete. Fix all broken markdown links while at it. Change-Id: I6a337bf4b84eacd5f5c749a4ee61331553279009 Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/411800 Reviewed-by: Mike Frysinger <vapier@chromium.org>
116 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
116 lines
5.3 KiB
Markdown
# Introduction
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Breakpad is a library and tool suite that allows you to distribute an
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application to users with compiler-provided debugging information removed,
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record crashes in compact "minidump" files, send them back to your server, and
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produce C and C++ stack traces from these minidumps. Breakpad can also write
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minidumps on request for programs that have not crashed.
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Breakpad is currently used by Google Chrome, Firefox, Google Picasa, Camino,
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Google Earth, and other projects.
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Breakpad has three main components:
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* The **client** is a library that you include in your application. It can
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write minidump files capturing the current threads' state and the identities
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of the currently loaded executable and shared libraries. You can configure
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the client to write a minidump when a crash occurs, or when explicitly
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requested.
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* The **symbol dumper** is a program that reads the debugging information
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produced by the compiler and produces a **symbol file**, in [Breakpad's own
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format](symbol_files.md).
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* The **processor** is a program that reads a minidump file, finds the
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appropriate symbol files for the versions of the executables and shared
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libraries the minidump mentions, and produces a human-readable C/C++ stack
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trace.
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# The minidump file format
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The minidump file format is similar to core files but was developed by Microsoft
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for its crash-uploading facility. A minidump file contains:
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* A list of the executable and shared libraries that were loaded in the
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process at the time the dump was created. This list includes both file names
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and identifiers for the particular versions of those files that were loaded.
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* A list of threads present in the process. For each thread, the minidump
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includes the state of the processor registers, and the contents of the
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threads' stack memory. These data are uninterpreted byte streams, as the
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Breakpad client generally has no debugging information available to produce
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function names or line numbers, or even identify stack frame boundaries.
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* Other information about the system on which the dump was collected:
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processor and operating system versions, the reason for the dump, and so on.
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Breakpad uses Windows minidump files on all platforms, instead of the
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traditional core files, for several reasons:
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* Core files can be very large, making them impractical to send across a
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network to the collector for processing. Minidumps are smaller, as they were
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designed to be used this way.
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* The core file format is poorly documented. For example, the Linux Standards
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Base does not describe how registers are stored in `PT_NOTE` segments.
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* It is harder to persuade a Windows machine to produce a core dump file than
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it is to persuade other machines to write a minidump file.
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* It simplifies the Breakpad processor to support only one file format.
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# Overview/Life of a minidump
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A minidump is generated via calls into the Breakpad library. By default,
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initializing Breakpad installs an exception/signal handler that writes a
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minidump to disk at exception time. On Windows, this is done via
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`SetUnhandledExceptionFilter()`; on OS X, this is done by creating a thread that
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waits on the Mach exception port; and on Linux, this is done by installing a
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signal handler for various exceptions like `SIGILL, SIGSEGV` etc.
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Once the minidump is generated, each platform has a slightly different way of
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uploading the crash dump. On Windows & Linux, a separate library of functions is
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provided that can be called into to do the upload. On OS X, a separate process
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is spawned that prompts the user for permission, if configured to do so, and
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sends the file.
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# Terminology
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**In-process vs. out-of-process exception handling** - it's generally considered
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that writing the minidump from within the crashed process is unsafe - key
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process data structures could be corrupted, or the stack on which the exception
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handler runs could have been overwritten, etc. All 3 platforms support what's
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known as "out-of-process" exception handling.
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# Integration overview
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## Breakpad Code Overview
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All the client-side code is found by visiting the Google Project at
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https://chromium.googlesource.com/breakpad/breakpad. The following directory structure is
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present in the `src` directory:
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* `processor` Contains minidump-processing code that is used on the server
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side and isn't of use on the client side
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* `client` Contains client minidump-generation libraries for all platforms
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* `tools` Contains source code & projects for building various tools on each
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platform.
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(Among other directories)
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* [Windows Integration Guide](windows_client_integration.md)
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* [Mac Integration Guide](mac_breakpad_starter_guide.md)
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* [Linux Integration Guide](linux_starter_guide.md)
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## Build process specifics(symbol generation)
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This applies to all platforms. Inside `src/tools/{platform}/dump_syms` is a tool
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that can read debugging information for each platform (e.g. for OS X/Linux,
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DWARF and STABS, and for Windows, PDB files) and generate a Breakpad symbol
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file. This tool should be run on your binary before it's stripped(in the case of
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OS X/Linux) and the symbol files need to be stored somewhere that the minidump
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processor can find. There is another tool, `symupload`, that can be used to
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upload symbol files if you have written a server that can accept them.
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