Stacktrace library starts review today 14th Dec
The formal review of the Stacktrace library by Antony Polukhin starts today 14th Dec and will conclude before Christmas. I appreciate we are likely a bit tired out from the many library reviews recently and of course it's Christmas, but given the lack of a portable way to work with stack backtraces, which you inevitably need to do eventually in any non-toy production application, Stacktrace needs your review! Stacktrace is an optionally header-only library providing four implementation backends, libunwind (POSIX only), windbg (Windows only), backtrace (from the C library on most POSIX implementations) and a null backend. At its very simplest it lets you capture the stack backtrace for the calling thread and to print it to a std::ostream& of your choice. The basic_stacktrace<> class quacks like a STL container of frame object instances. The rest of the API pretty much follows STL design principles for the most part. Use is therefore unsurprising. You can find the documentation at http://apolukhin.github.io/stacktrace/index.html and the github repo at https://github.com/apolukhin/stacktrace. Review guidelines ================= Reviews should be submitted to the developer list (boost@lists.boost.org), preferably with '[stacktrace]' in the subject. Or if you don't wish to for some reason or are not subscribed to the developer list you can send them privately to me at 's_sourceforge at nedprod dot com'. If so, please let me know whether or not you'd like your review to be forwarded to the list. For your review you may wish to consider the following questions: - What is your evaluation of the design? - What is your evaluation of the implementation? Most of my personal concerns with this library are with the implementation and I would hugely appreciate feedback from others with substantial experience of using stacktracing "in anger" in non-trivial use case scenarios. - What is your evaluation of the documentation? - What is your evaluation of the potential usefulness of the library? - Did you try to use the library? With what compiler? Did you have any problems? - How much effort did you put into your evaluation? A glance? A quick reading? In-depth study? - Are you knowledgeable about the problem domain? And finally, every review should attempt to answer this question: - Do you think the library should be accepted as a Boost library? Be sure to say this explicitly so that your other comments don't obscure your overall opinion. Even if you do not wish to give a full review any technical comment regarding the library is welcome as part of the review period and will help me as the review manager decide whether the library should be accepted as a Boost library. Any questions about the use of the library are also welcome. Finally, thanks to Edward whose announcement of the Synapse library review I borrowed heavily from as I thought it very well structured. Hopefully the above is just as clear. Niall -- ned Productions Limited Consulting http://www.nedproductions.biz/ http://ie.linkedin.com/in/nialldouglas/
In the documentation for stacktrace I do not see anything about what level of C++ is required for a compiler using the stacktrace library or any information on what compilers have been tested when using the library. In the section of "Build, Macros and Backends" I do not think there is enough information about using a particular backend, other than saying that you need to link with such-and-such. Does stacktrace "automatically" find the header files it needs from these backends ? Even so I think some information about where it looks for the backend header files need to be given. I also think that some information of what libraries it looks to link with needs to be given. I am assuming it links with the static versions of these backend libraries unless I define either BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK and BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK, or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK. What if I want to use the header-only version but I want to link with the shared library backend ? I also assume that if I link with the static library backend I should probably be linking with the RTL static library, while if I link with the shared library backend I should also be linking with the RTL shared library. What about 32-bit versus 64-bit use of stacktrace ? Do they both work as advertised with the correct backends, whether static or shared ? I think the "Build, Macros and Backends" need rto be expanded to cover alol these topics.
2016-12-15 3:44 GMT+03:00 Edward Diener
In the documentation for stacktrace I do not see anything about what level of C++ is required for a compiler using the stacktrace library or any information on what compilers have been tested when using the library.
It's C++98. Tested on latest clang(c++03, c++11), gcc(c++98, c++11, c++1y), msvc.
In the section of "Build, Macros and Backends" I do not think there is enough information about using a particular backend, other than saying that you need to link with such-and-such. Does stacktrace "automatically" find the header files it needs from these backends ? Even so I think some information about where it looks for the backend header files need to be given. I also think that some information of what libraries it looks to link with needs to be given. I am assuming it links with the static versions of these backend libraries unless I define either BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK and BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK, or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK. What if I want to use the header-only version but I want to link with the shared library backend ? I also assume that if I link with the static library backend I should probably be linking with the RTL static library, while if I link with the shared library backend I should also be linking with the RTL shared library.
What about 32-bit versus 64-bit use of stacktrace ? Do they both work as advertised with the correct backends, whether static or shared ? I think the "Build, Macros and Backends" need rto be expanded to cover alol these topics.
All the headers are found automatically and the library is header only if you do not define BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK. Backend is chosen automatically in header only mode. You need to do nothing, unless you encounter some problems on default setup (like you OS is POSIX but not LSB Core Specification 4.1) or unless you wish to disable stacktraces. If you define BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK you have to manually link with one of the backends. I'll try to improve the "Build, Macros and Backends" section to be more clear. -- Best regards, Antony Polukhin
On 12/15/2016 2:08 AM, Antony Polukhin wrote:
2016-12-15 3:44 GMT+03:00 Edward Diener
: In the documentation for stacktrace I do not see anything about what level of C++ is required for a compiler using the stacktrace library or any information on what compilers have been tested when using the library.
It's C++98. Tested on latest clang(c++03, c++11), gcc(c++98, c++11, c++1y), msvc.
Some of your examples in the doc use c++11 features, so I think you need to specifically say in the doc that the library itself is c++98 on up.
In the section of "Build, Macros and Backends" I do not think there is enough information about using a particular backend, other than saying that you need to link with such-and-such. Does stacktrace "automatically" find the header files it needs from these backends ? Even so I think some information about where it looks for the backend header files need to be given. I also think that some information of what libraries it looks to link with needs to be given. I am assuming it links with the static versions of these backend libraries unless I define either BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK and BOOST_ALL_DYN_LINK, or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK. What if I want to use the header-only version but I want to link with the shared library backend ? I also assume that if I link with the static library backend I should probably be linking with the RTL static library, while if I link with the shared library backend I should also be linking with the RTL shared library.
What about 32-bit versus 64-bit use of stacktrace ? Do they both work as advertised with the correct backends, whether static or shared ? I think the "Build, Macros and Backends" need rto be expanded to cover alol these topics.
All the headers are found automatically and the library is header only if you do not define BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK.
I think you need to explain where you are "automatically" looking for header files in case header files are not found.
Backend is chosen automatically in header only mode. You need to do nothing, unless you encounter some problems on default setup (like you OS is POSIX but not LSB Core Specification 4.1) or unless you wish to disable stacktraces.
Again you need to explain where you are "automatically" looking for appropriate static libraries in case one is not being found.
If you define BOOST_STACKTRACE_LINK or BOOST_STACKTRACE_DYN_LINK you have to manually link with one of the backends.
I'll try to improve the "Build, Macros and Backends" section to be more clear.
Please do, You don't want annoyed end-users in case all this "automatic" finding does not work as you imagine it should. Furthermore explanations of what RTL ( static or shared ) should/need be used should be explained also. These various combinations of static or shared backends and/or RTLs need to be explained. I gather the backends themselves are not hooked to compiler RTLs, but I do not know if stacktrace itself uses compiler RTLs or not, but I expect it might. Don't annoy end-users of your library by assuming that all this stuff must "just work", so you do not need to explain these things in detail, because if it does not "just work" as you imagine the first thing they will probably do is dismiss your library.
participants (3)
-
Antony Polukhin
-
Edward Diener
-
Niall Douglas