I use a crash reporting feature that allows the user to submit a crash report if the application crashed with an uncaught exception.
After adopting C++20 coroutines entered the application.
If there is an unexpected exception thrown in a coroutine the exception is caught before it is rethrown.
This causes crashreports to not show the stacktrace needed to figure out what happened, but only the stacktrace to the coroutine that rethrew the exception. This basically makes any crash reporting useless.
As far as I could find there is no way to prevent the catching of any exceptions by the coroutine because it is a required part of the design.
Is there a way to improve this I cant see?
I am curious because I found nobody else complaining yet. :->
Edit: To clarify the app is running on Windows, I mean the stacktrace of a minidump that is created at the point of the unhandled exception using: SetUnhandledExceptionFilter + MiniDumpWriteDump
C++ does not have standard stack tracing yet, so there is no nice builtin way to do this.
However, there are ways, which rely on keeping information in the promise objects.
Clang has documentation for some common debugging methods for coroutines.
The best solution we have found is as follows (Windows specific!):
Until now we used SetUnhandledExceptionFilter at the start of the app to set an exceptionfilter function that writes a minidump.
Instead we now use _set_se_translator.
If we want the program to just crash (f.e. if windows is set to write dumps) we set a function which calls std::abort.
If we want to handle it interactively we set a function which asks the user whether to send a minidump, the dump is written as before at this point.
Both cases provide the full callstack in the dump.
The only downside remaining is we cant let the program crash for "normal" exceptions to dump, this was possible before. But the "most important" exceptions (f.e. access violations) work.
I'm trying to get FLTK running in my c++ project. I'm creating an OMNeT++ simulation and would like to use the GUI like an emulated host, that is, I can make a send button and the host attached to the GUI will queue up a message to send in the simulation.
The issue I'm having is that, when the FLTK window runs, it waits for a response which causes the whole simulation to freeze until I close the window. My solution was to run the GUI in a separate thread. However, now I'm getting this error:
Tcl_ServiceModeHook: Notifier not initialized
Below is the code for the class containing the thread and the GUI.
#include <Enumerations.H>
#include <Fl.H>
#include <Fl_Box.H>
#include <Fl_Widget.H>
#include <Fl_Window.H>
#include <GUI.h>
void GUI::callThread() {
t = std::thread(&GUI::openWindow, this);
}
int GUI::openWindow() {
Fl_Window *window = new Fl_Window(300,180);
Fl_Box *box = new Fl_Box(20,40,260,100,"Hello, World!");
box->box(FL_UP_BOX);
box->labelsize(36);
box->labelfont(FL_BOLD+FL_ITALIC);
box->labeltype(FL_SHADOW_LABEL);
window->end();
window->show();
return Fl::run();
}
All I do to call it is:
GUI *g = new GUI();
g->callThread();
If I instead just call openWindow() directly, The window opens fine but it waits for an action so the rest of the simulation is not able to continue.
I'm trying to make this cross-platform (Has to work on Mac and Windows). I tried Qt (too complicated to set up) and wxWidgets (make errors on my computer) so FLTK seemed like one of the next best choices.
If anyone knows how to fix this error or has any opinions on a better way to set up my GUI, I'm all ears. This just seemed like the only thing I could do.
OMNeT++ 5.0 and up has Qtenv, which is a QT based runtime (Tkenv is now deprecated), so the whole QT setup, dependency etc. is done for you by OMNeT++. Qtenv will be the default runtime in OMNeT++ 5.1
It's not really clear what you are trying to achieve. If you want to insert events into the event queue whenever you press a button, you definitely have to use a separate thread, but you have to clarify how the simulation and wall clock time is related to each other. If they must be synced, you need to implement a real-time scheduler that syncs the simulation time with the wall clock time. The sockets example in OMNeT++ does this and behaves similarly what you describe except that the external event inserted into event queue is coming from a socket (where you can attach with a browser) isntead of coming from a GUI.
If you don't care about synchronization i.e. you want to use this for some kind of demonstration, then you don't have to use a real-time scheduler, but you should be aware the OMNeT++ is inherently single threaded and your GUI is running in a separate thread, so you have to sync those too. i.e. It's absolutely forbidden to access ANYTHING that OMNET is using from the GUI thread (or bad things will happen).
And the poor man's solution: if you just want to trigger an event (i.e. you really need only a button). Write an application in the host which regularly polls a volatile bool parameter. If it finds the parameter "true" it sends the event and then sets the parameter to "false". Now how you trigger an event? You can browse the parameters of the given node in the property inspector (lower left panel in runtime) and you can change it's value by hand back to true, then allow the simulation to continue. On the next poll, the host's app will detect again that the parameter is true and do the sending again. Obviously it's limited, but it gives a limited interaction without writing too much code (and all the multithreading issues are handled by the runtime itself)
I would like to have my code create a dump for unhandled exceptions.
I'd thought of using the SetUnhandledExceptionFilter. But what are the cases when SetUnhandledExceptionFilter may not work as expected. For example what about stack corruption issues when, for instance, a buffer overrun occurs on stack?
what will happen in this case? are there any additional solutions which will always work?
I've been using SetUnhandledExceptionFilter for quite a while and have not noticed any crashes/problems that are not trapped correctly. And, if an exception is not handled somewhere in the code, it should get handled by the filter. From MSDN regarding the filter...
After calling this function, if an exception occurs in a process that
is not being debugged, and the exception makes it to the unhandled
exception filter, that filter will call the exception filter function
specified by the lpTopLevelExceptionFilter parameter.
There is no mention that the above applies to only certain types of exceptions.
I don't use the filter to create a dump file because the application uses the Microsoft WER system to report crashes. Rather, the filter is used to provide an opportunity to collect two additional files to attach to the crash report (and dump file) that Microsoft will collect.
Here's an example of Microsoft's crash report dashboard for the application with module names redacted.
You'll see that there's a wide range of crash types collected, including, stack buffer overrun.
Also make sure no other code calls the SetUnhandledExceptionFilter() after you set it to your handler.
I had a similar issue and in my case it was caused by another linked library (ImageMagick) which called SetUnhandledExceptionFilter() from its Magick::InitializeMagick() which was called just in some situations in our application. Then it replaced our handler with ImageMagick's handler.
I found it by setting a breakpoint on SetUnhandledExceptionFilter() in gdb and checked the backtrace.
Everyone (at least everyone who uses a compiled language) has faced compilation errors but how many times do you get to actually crash the compiler?
I've had my fair share of "internal compiler errors" but most went away just by re-compiling. Do you have a (minimal) piece of code that crashes the compiler?
I write the compiler we use, so it crashes sometimes.
easy.
// -*- C++ -*-
template <int n>
class Foo : public Foo<n+1>
{
};
int main(int, char*[])
{
Foo<0> x;
return 0;
};
ejgottl#luna:~/tmp$ g++ -ftemplate-depth-1000000 -Wall foo.cpp -o foo
g++: Internal error: Segmentation fault (program cc1plus)
Please submit a full bug report.
See `<URL:http://gcc.gnu.org/bugs.html>` for instructions.
For Debian GNU/Linux specific bug reporting instructions, see
`<URL:file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.2/README.Bugs>`.
I haven't made GHC (a Haskell compiler) crash yet, but I've gotten it to error out with a
My brain just exploded.
I can't handle pattern bindings for existentially-quantified constructors.
It's pretty easy to work around, and you don't hit this unless you have some tricky (and usually wrong) design, but it probably wins as the best compiler error message ever.
VC catches it gracefully now, but in the mid 90's, this would crashed both Microsoft C++ and Borland C++ compilers:
struct MyClass
{
MyClass operator->() { return *this; }
};
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
MyClass A;
A->x;
}
An overloaded operator-> is intrinsically recursive. The function is expected to return a pointer, which oper-> is again applied to. This fragment made code generation infinitely recursive.
Actionscript 3.0:
switch(on_some_variable)
{
}
Empty switch = Kaboom!
Visual C++ 9.0 SP1
this just happened to me
------ Build started: Project: pdfp, Configuration: Debug Win32 ------
Compiling...
reader.cpp
xref.cpp
c:\projects\pdfp\xref.cpp(52) : fatal error C1001: An internal error has occurred in the compiler.
(compiler file 'f:\dd\vctools\compiler\cxxfe\sl\p1\c\toil.c', line 8569)
To work around this problem, try simplifying or changing the program near the locations listed above.
Please choose the Technical Support command on the Visual C++
Help menu, or open the Technical Support help file for more information
Generating Code...
Build log was saved at "file://c:\Projects\pdfp\Debug\BuildLog.htm"
pdfp - 1 error(s), 0 warning(s)
========== Build: 0 succeeded, 1 failed, 0 up-to-date, 0 skipped ==========
Well, this didn't actually crash the compiler -- It was merely a bug were VC++ wouldn't accept perfectly good code. (details provided here).
The odd this about it was that it was only triggered when three fairly obscure conditions were all met. Moving one line of code was all that was needed for an effective workaround. And one of the needed pre-conditions was "using namespace std;" which is widely discouraged in production code.
Nevertheless, messages asking how to fix the problem were a staple on Microsoft VC++ newsgroups. I couldn't figure out how so many people stumbled onto an obscure bug. So, eventually, I asked someone.....
The exact code needed to trigger the bug was an example in Stroustrup's "The C++ Programming Langauge". (*)
(*) Note, I'm not saying he did it on purpose. I sure he tested it under a UNIX variant of C++, and was completely unaware of it's affect on VC++.
I've seen a few compiler bugs in the C# compiler (all edge cases, all reported appropriately) and confirmed some crashes provoked by other people.
The scariest compiler (of a sort) bug I've encountered was a JIT bug in one version of Java. It was quite reproducible, but caused the VM to go down. Adding a fairly no-op statement (I can't remember exactly what offhand - possibly just declaring an extra local variable with an initial value) moved it away from whatever corner case it happened to be - and it was fixed in a later version.
This crashed the C64 BASIC:
PRINT 0 + "" +- 0
Yes, especially when it's an old or undermaintained compiler (GCC 2.95, Tendra in C++ mode). I don't keep the pieces of code around, though.
Visual C++ 5. 'Nuff said.
Oops, forgot an 'e' in typedef and crashed the compiler.
typdef struct kGUIColor GameColor;
c:\source\kgui\samples\space\space.cpp(35) : fatal error C1001: INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR
(compiler file 'msc1.cpp', line 2708)
Please choose the Technical Support command on the Visual C++
Help menu, or open the Technical Support help file for more information
Today VS2003SP1 gave me a C1001 (Internal Compiler Error) complaining about compiler file 'msc1.cpp', line 2708) because of this:
struct PATTERN {
…
};
It turns out that the problem was that the structure name I was trying to define (PATTERN) was already a typedef in the GDI for a brush type. However instead of telling me that the symbol is already defined (like it does for most other things) it not only did not point to the structure as the problem—I narrowed the problem down to it by selectively commenting out blocks until the error went away—but it also gave me the aforementioned cryptic error which has nothing to do with the file specified—which I can’t even find to examine the line in question. :|
I was able to reproduce it with the following code:
typedef int SOMETHINGOROTHER;
struct SOMETHINGOROTHER {};
> fatal error C1001: INTERNAL COMPILER ERROR
> (compiler file 'msc1.cpp', line 2708) …
Whereas the following code gives the expected error message:
struct SOMETHINGOROTHER {};
typedef int SOMETHINGOROTHER;
> 'SOMETHINGOROTHER' : redefinition; different basic types
Clearly the problem is in the compiler’s structure handling routine.
I wonder if VS2005+ do better…
Here's a way to crash the VS2003 C++ compiler.
typedef map<int,int> Tmap;
private: Tmap; * m_map;
This will result in a crash and the following error message
fatal error C1001: INTERNAL COMPILER
ERROR (compiler file 'msc1.cpp', line
2708) Please choose the Technical
Support command on the Visual C++ Help
menu, or open the Technical Support
help file for more information
Remove the semicolon immediately after Tmap (second line which defines m_map) to eliminate the error.
In a project I was working in, some specific usages of Boost Lambda expressions could make the Visual C++ compiler crash. (We were using Visual Studio 2003)
The compiler would only crash during the release build, a debug build would work fine.
There had been a religious war raging through the team about the appropriate usage of the lambda libraries, I was almost grateful that the compiler settled it for us. :-)
In version 1.2.x of the Mono C# compiler would crash quite a bit with complicated code (if I remember correctly, nested anonymous delegates). Fortunately with 2.x release, I haven't seen any crashes.
At my previous job we had a simulator which was notorious for being able to crash (ICE) compilers or cause them to generate incorrect code. And when the code actually was generated correctly, ofter the compiler took 15 minutes for a single source file. Visual Studio was never (as long as I worked there) able to compile the simulator core.
The core was automatically generated from a DSL, and the generated code often pushed the compiler to its limits.
Upgrading to a new version of GCC often caused widespread nervosity: will the new version work?
Thanks to #Nick, this crashes VS2005.
template<typename Res, typename T>
Res operator_cast(const T& t)
{
return t.operator Res();
}
int main()
{
return operator_cast<int>(0);
}
I've crashed a compiler before by running it out of memory.
Give a DOS compiler about 0.5mb of source code. Crunch.
When you get a message "Catastrophic Failure" you know you're trying....
Michael
I use both pcc and gcc to compile my old OS project.
I found a bug with how both pcc and gcc handle a non-trivial piece of code and it crashed pcc.
(chars are signed on my platform)
struct{
char myvalue:1;
}mystruct;
pcc crashed because all bitfield values must be int though, so it's really more buggy there, but gcc handles it wrongly. See, if you think about it, it is signed, but only has room for one bit. So therefore, it only can store 0 and -1. Well, gcc handles it wrong by storing 0 or 1.
VC++ has crashed on me when compiling C++ if template usage is messed up (e.g., missing out on a closing ">").
I did. Some Delphi versions (lets say #4) crashed very often with cryptic error messages.
The newer versions (2006 and more) are stable but not rock solid. (7 was great in that case).
Compiler crashes often occur with large edits, and debug sessions of complex projects (lots of dll's). Most of the time a restart of the ide is enough. But sometimes you need to restart the PC.
O and I once crashed OS2 along with the compiler because the swapfile grew too large.
One time when I used the generators example from the Python docs, it broke the version of Python we were using. The same week, one of my colleagues managed to misuse the FFI such that any calculation involving the number 3 would crash python.
The Microsoft Xbox 360 compiler can crash easily. I was given source code with Japanese comments and when converted to regular text one of the last characters on the line was a '\' so it continued the comment onto the next line. If the next line was a switch command, then the compiler crashes.
//wierd japanese characters here %^$$\
switch(n)
{
case 0:
.....
break;
case 1:
.....
break;
}
I have crashed Delphi 7 many times asking it to compile legacy dos code.
The prime culprit seems to be any qualification of something as being in the system unit. This won't always blow it up but when it blows up on such stuff I look through and rewrite anything that requires such an override and the problem goes away.
The blowups are 100% reproduceable but I have never managed to make a simple test case. It doesn't actually crash the compiler most of the time, you usually get an error that has nothing to do with the problem and may be hundreds of lines from it. The environment is destabilized, save and exit is ok but don't think of doing anything else.
Back in the stone age with Borland Pascal 7 (the last dos version) I broke it many times. No crash, just incorrect and inconsistent code emission. I finally learned to keep the .EXE (not counting debug info) below 3mb. The farther beyond that I went the more unstable it got.
I've crashed VC++ a number of times, usually with template code. But that's not the most interesting crash...
I crashed the VS2005 Team System compiler with the /analyze option compiling my shared code library which compiled without error without the switch, and on VS2008 with and without the switch. Of course MS wasn't very interested because it was a bug in the old version of the compiler, but I thought it was pretty interesting.
I managed to segfault the Python interpreter. Of course, I was working on a C extension at the time and getting it not-quite-right.
It doesn't happen as much as it used to, but occasionally the ASP.net precompiler has issues - I haven't seen it personally, but I have fixed a problem on another project once where they had name clashes because they weren't using namespaces properly (caused compiler crashes) during pre-compile.
In the good old days (unmanaged MSVC++) we had the odd compiler crash usually due to linking in external static win32 classes (.lib) and a couple of odd bits of code occasionally caused issues, but these were all picked up very quickly.
I don't know if I would call it crashing, but sdcc (Small Device C Compiler) fails at compiling code formed in a particular way:
Target: 8051
Code had to execute in a 512 byte cache loaded from an external tester
Tester is in control and stores the code - cache can't fetch the next page
No function calls allowed - the PC (program counter) would skip to a place not resident in cache; preprocessor macros were used to accomplish modular coding practice
Jumps (branching) allowed if it doesn't skip out of the cache
No const values - in the data section of the program code which causes code in cache to fetch something not in cache - preprocessor constant (#define) OK here
The preprocessor macros are unrolled resulting in flat, but large code - everything in main(); execution skips the startup code (setting up the stack, etc) and starts at the beginning of main()
Relevant part of this answer:
Occasionally, sdcc would refuse to compile syntactically correct code, with a message about running out of memory. This even happened compiling on 64-bit boxes with 8GB of RAM.
The solution in these cases was to split the firmware into separate pieces and compile them separately and execute them separately. The pieces may have been able to be linked back together, but at that point it didn't matter.
I didn't try it, but the Keil 8051 compiler probably could have handled the problematic code.