Question

The target platform is Windows. Sought-after languages: C++ (Native as well as CLI), C#. Java examples are al right as well.

I am not too worried about security, but I am curios about the language agnostic design aspect of this as well – what is a good way to deliver a crash report?

Something that I am looking for – code that can gather as much stack trace, environment as possible, then also lets the user type up steps that led to this, also leave their name and contact information optionally (they are paid clients who would want to hear back about their issue). Also, paranoid users should have the ability to send as little identifying information as possible.

For this reason I think it would make sense to compile an email message, channel it to the user’s favorite email client, and then let the user preview it before sending, with the ability to modify plain-text fields when needed.

Maybe email is not the best way to go. I am using Visual Studio 2010 for development.

P.S. I asked for examples in 3 languages because we use all 3, and I am actually not certain whether native or managed code would catch all exceptions and thus have a chance to report an error (the app is huge and hard to dig through, but I do want to propose this new feature, not without researching first though).

Thanks.

Answer 1

Take a look at breakpad. You also might be interested in the UnhandledExceptionHandler and its ilk for C#. Also take a look at minidumps.