doc/stack-trace.texi

@node Stack traces
@section Stack traces

@c Copyright (C) 2024--2026 Free Software Foundation, Inc.

@c Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
@c under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.3 or
@c any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no
@c Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts.  A
@c copy of the license is at <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/fdl-1.3.en.html>.

@c Written by Bruno Haible.

@mindex stack-trace

Printing a stack trace
was traditionally seen as a feature of the debugging environment
and thus only implemented in the debuggers (@command{gdb} etc.).
However, they are also useful in production code,
for use in two circumstances:
@itemize
@item
When a problem occurs on a user's machine,
when the user is merely a user, not a programmer.
@item
In unit tests that run in continuous-integration environments.
In such environments, the virtual machine is discarded
immediately after the tests have run.
It is not possible to run a debugger in such environments.
@end itemize
@noindent
And in fact, printing a stack trace is part of the basic runtime system
in programming languages such as
Java (@url{https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/lang/Throwable.html#printStackTrace--, printStackTrace method}),
Python (@url{https://docs.python.org/3/library/traceback.html, print_exception method}),
Go (@url{https://pkg.go.dev/runtime/debug#PrintStack, PrintStack function}),
and
ISO C++ 23 (@url{https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/utility/basic_stacktrace, std::stacktrace class}).

Gnulib provides a module @samp{stack-trace} with this feature:
@code{print_stack_trace ()}
prints a stack trace of the current thread to standard error.

For it to work best, three requirements need to be met:
@itemize
@item
The @url{https://github.com/ianlancetaylor/libbacktrace, libbacktrace library}
or GCC's sanitizer library @code{libasan} needs to be installed.
@item
The program needs to be compiled with debugging information (option @code{-g}).
@item
On macOS, where debugging information
is stored in a separate directory rather than in the compiled binary
(see @url{https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10044697/#12827463}),
the @code{dsymutil} program needs to be used when linking,
and the debugging information needs to be copied when the program is installed.
Cf. @url{https://github.com/ianlancetaylor/libbacktrace/issues/122#issuecomment-2122589147}.
@end itemize

When these requirements are not met, the function @code{print_stack_trace ()}
either prints a stack trace without source file names and line numbers,
or prints nothing at all.

@mindex abort-debug
Gnulib also provides a module @samp{abort-debug},
that overrides the @code{abort} function so that
it prints the stack trace of the current thread, before actually aborting.
Thus, @code{abort ()} remains the idiom of choice
for signaling a fatal situation that requires developer attention:
it is useful both in debugging environments and production code.

Note:
While the original @code{abort} function is safe to call in signal handlers,
the overridden @code{abort} function is not.
In signal handlers, you will need to call the original @code{abort} function,
by doing @code{#undef abort} first.