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macospdb-filespostmortem-debugging

Does MacOS/X have a separated-debug-info mechanism similar to Windows' PDB files?


When developing and deploying an application under Windows, the developer has the option to store locally the .pdb files that are generated by the compiler as part of each build, and have his program call MiniDumpWriteDump in response to a crash to generate a .dmp file that can later be sent back to the developer. Then the developer can match the received .dmp to the appropriate .pdb file and executable and use that to do post-mortem debugging of the crash (i.e. see a stack trace, etc).

It's a pain to set up and manage, but the advantage is that it allows the developer to strip all the debug information out of his released program and yet still be able to debug crashes that occur in the field. This allows the program's install size to be much smaller, and perhaps makes the program less susceptible to reverse-engineering.

My question is, does MacOS/X have any kind of mechanism like .pdb? The only options I have seen for MacOS/X are to either "strip" your executable file (resulting in a small executable, but very little debug info if it ever crashes), or don't (resulting in an executable that provides a very helpful Crash Report when it crashes, but is much larger than it needs to be otherwise).


Solution

  • I think dsymutil is what you are looking for. It creates a .dSYM folder named after the binary it runs on which includes debug information.

    To be honest I have never actually used it. And I'm not sure what kind of stack trace you need from the remote computer.