AmiWest 2013 Lesson 2

Interpreting Crash Reports

So your program has crashed and you managed to capture the crash report from either Reaper or Grim Reaper or both. This lesson will focus on interpreting that crash report so that you can find the source of the bug.

Using Crash-Logs for Debugging

A good introduction to interpreting crash logs is available in the article Using Crash-Logs for Debugging by Hans de Ruiter.

Here is a quick summary of the important points:

• Use -gstabs for debugging. There already exists a detailed explanation of the Stabs format if you wish to learn more.
• Check your stack boundaries first. AmigaOS does not have automatic stack enlargement.
• The addr2line tool can be used to find the source code line of a crash.

Since that article was written the Reaper and Grim Reaper now interpret debug symbols automatically. This capability is available to applications via Exec's ObtainDebugSymbol() and ReleaseDebugSymbol() functions.