Question

I want to implement an analog of backtrace utility under windows in order to add this information to exception for example.

I need to capture return addresses and then translate it into symbols names.

I’m aware of StackWalk64 and of StackWalker project but unfortunately it has several important drawbacks:

• It is known to be very slow (the StackWalk64) and I don’t want to waste much time for collecting the trace the basically can be done as fast as walking on linked list.
• The function StackWalk64 is known to be not thread safe.

I want to support only x86 and possible x86_64 architectures

Basic idea I have is following:

1. Run on stack using esp/ebp registers similarly to what GCC’s __builtin_return_address(x)/__builtin_frame_address(x) doe till I reach the bottom of the stack (this is what glibc does).
2. Translate addresses to symbols
3. Demangle them.

Problems/Questions:

1. How do I know that I reach the to of the stack? For example glibc implementation has __libc_stack_end so it is easy to find where to stop. Is there any analog of such thing under Windows? How can I get stack bottom address?
2. What are the analogs of dladdr functionality. Now I know that unlike ELF platform that keeps most of symbol names, PE format does not. So it should read somehow the debug information. Any ideas?

Answer 1

• Capturing Stack Trace: RtlCaptureStackBackTrace

• Getting Symbols: Using DBG Help library (MSVC only). Key functions:

  // Initialization
  hProcess = GetCurrentProcess()
  SymSetOptions(SYMOPT_DEFERRED_LOADS)
  SymInitialize(hProcess, NULL, TRUE)
  // Fetching symbol
  SymFromAddr(...)
  

  Implementation can be found there