libbacktrace

A C library that may be linked into a C/C++ program to produce symbolic backtraces

Initially written by Ian Lance Taylor [email protected].

This is version 1.0. It is likely that this will always be version 1.0.

The libbacktrace library may be linked into a program or library and used to produce symbolic backtraces. Sample uses would be to print a detailed backtrace when an error occurs or to gather detailed profiling information.

In general the functions provided by this library are async-signal-safe, meaning that they may be safely called from a signal handler. That said, on systems that use dl_iterate_phdr, such as GNU/Linux, the first call to a libbacktrace function will call dl_iterate_phdr, which is not in general async-signal-safe. Therefore, programs that call libbacktrace from a signal handler should ensure that they make an initial call from outside of a signal handler. Similar considerations apply when arranging to call libbacktrace from within malloc; dl_iterate_phdr can also call malloc, so make an initial call to a libbacktrace function outside of malloc before trying to call libbacktrace functions within malloc.

The libbacktrace library is provided under a BSD license. See the source files for the exact license text.

The public functions are declared and documented in the header file backtrace.h, which should be #include'd by a user of the library.

Building libbacktrace will generate a file backtrace-supported.h, which a user of the library may use to determine whether backtraces will work. See the source file backtrace-supported.h.in for the macros that it defines.

As of July 2024, libbacktrace supports ELF, PE/COFF, Mach-O, and XCOFF executables with DWARF debugging information. In other words, it supports GNU/Linux, *BSD, macOS, Windows, and AIX. The library is written to make it straightforward to add support for other object file and debugging formats.

The library relies on the C++ unwind API defined at https://itanium-cxx-abi.github.io/cxx-abi/abi-eh.html This API is provided by GCC and clang.