Crash Handling System

Cutter uses Breakpad as a backend for crash handling.

Crash Handling System is disabled by default to not interfere with developers while debugging. To enable this system, set the CUTTER_ENABLE_CRASH_REPORTS build option.

Solution Description

There are only 2 source files:

  • CrashHandler.h

  • CrashHandler.cpp

And the API is very simple: One function, initCrashHandler(), enables the Crash Handling System if CUTTER_ENABLE_CRASH_REPORTS is true, otherwise it does nothing.

As soon as a signal is raised, crashHandler(int signum) is called with the signal’s code as an argument. This function first writes a crash dump to the operating system’s temporary directory to catch core and memory state as it was at the moment of the crash.

Then the crash dialog is shown:

../../_images/crash-dialog.png

If the user chooses to create a crash dump, the prepared dump is moved to the directory specified by the user. And then the success dialog is shown:

../../_images/success-dump-dialog.png