Why are we not using libbacktrace for backtrace?

[Johannes Pfau]

Am Thu, 14 Jun 2018 20:57:05 +0000 schrieb Yuxuan Shui:

> On Thursday, 14 June 2018 at 17:26:50 UTC, Johannes Pfau wrote:
>> Am Thu, 14 Jun 2018 01:19:30 +0000 schrieb Yuxuan Shui:
>>
>>> Just ran into a problem where program will crash during stack trace.
>>> Turns out not only does druntime not support compressed debug info, it
>>> cannot handle it at all.
>>> 
>>> So I was thinking why don't we use a existing and proven library for
>>> this, instead of roll our own?
>>
>> GDC uses libbacktrace since 2013: https://github.com/D-Programming-GDC/
>> GDC/blob/master/libphobos/libdruntime/gcc/backtrace.d
>>
>> I think the main problem for DMD/LDC is that libbacktrace is not an
>> installed library, it's only available while building GCC.
> 
> libbacktrace is a standalone library:
> https://github.com/ianlancetaylor/libbacktrace
> 
> GCC is using it.

It was initially developed for GCC and only available in the GCC tree. 
Ian Lance Taylor is a GCC developer.

However, my point is that libbacktrace does not install as a .so shared 
library. Try to find packages for debian, rhel, ... It's just not 
distributed.
As there is a standalone github repo now, the DMD builds could probably 
compile the source code into libdruntime like GCC does, but it's not as 
simple as linking a library.

-- 
Johannes