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docs/linux_starter_guide.md

+# How To Add Breakpad To Your Linux Application
+
+This document is an overview of using the Breakpad client libraries on Linux.
+
+## Building the Breakpad libraries
+
+Breakpad provides an Autotools build system that will build both the Linux
+client libraries and the processor libraries. Running `./configure && make` in
+the Breakpad source directory will produce
+**src/client/linux/libbreakpad\_client.a**, which contains all the code
+necessary to produce minidumps from an application.
+
+## Integrating Breakpad into your Application
+
+First, configure your build process to link **libbreakpad\_client.a** into your
+binary, and set your include paths to include the **src** directory in the
+**google-breakpad** source tree. Next, include the exception handler header: ```
+
+# include "client/linux/handler/exception_handler.h"
+
+```
+
+Now you can instantiate an `ExceptionHandler` object. Exception handling is active for the lifetime of the `ExceptionHandler` object, so you should instantiate it as early as possible in your application's startup process, and keep it alive for as close to shutdown as possible. To do anything useful, the `ExceptionHandler` constructor requires a path where it can write minidumps, as well as a callback function to receive information about minidumps that were written:
+```
+
+static bool dumpCallback(const google_breakpad::MinidumpDescriptor& descriptor,
+void* context, bool succeeded) { printf("Dump path: %s\n", descriptor.path());
+return succeeded; }
+
+void crash() { volatile int* a = (int*)(NULL); *a = 1; }
+
+int main(int argc, char* argv[]) { google_breakpad::MinidumpDescriptor
+descriptor("/tmp"); google_breakpad::ExceptionHandler eh(descriptor, NULL,
+dumpCallback, NULL, true, -1); crash(); return 0; } ```
+
+Compiling and running this example should produce a minidump file in /tmp, and
+it should print the minidump filename before exiting. You can read more about
+the other parameters to the `ExceptionHandler` constructor <a
+href='http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/source/browse/trunk/src/client/linux/handler/exception_handler.h'>in
+the exception_handler.h source file</a>.
+
+**Note**: You should do as little work as possible in the callback function.
+Your application is in an unsafe state. It may not be safe to allocate memory or
+call functions from other shared libraries. The safest thing to do is `fork` and
+`exec` a new process to do any work you need to do. If you must do some work in
+the callback, the Breakpad source contains <a
+href='http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/source/browse/trunk/src/common/linux/linux_libc_support.h'>some
+simple reimplementations of libc functions</a>, to avoid calling directly into
+libc, as well as <a href='http://code.google.com/p/linux-syscall-support/'>a
+header file for making Linux system calls</a> (in **src/third\_party/lss**) to
+avoid calling into other shared libraries.
+
+## Sending the minidump file
+
+In a real application, you would want to handle the minidump in some way, likely
+by sending it to a server for analysis. The Breakpad source tree contains <a
+href='http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/source/browse/#svn/trunk/src/common/linux'>some
+HTTP upload source</a> that you might find useful, as well as <a
+href='http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/source/browse/#svn/trunk/src/tools/linux/symupload'>a
+minidump upload tool</a>.
+
+## Producing symbols for your application
+
+To produce useful stack traces, Breakpad requires you to convert the debugging
+symbols in your binaries to <a
+href='http://code.google.com/p/google-breakpad/wiki/SymbolFiles'>text-format
+symbol files</a>. First, ensure that you've compiled your binaries with `-g` to
+include debugging symbols. Next, compile the `dump_syms` tool by running
+`configure && make` in the Breakpad source directory. Next, run `dump_syms` on
+your binaries to produce the text-format symbols. For example, if your main
+binary was named `test`: `$ google-breakpad/src/tools/linux/dump_syms/dump_syms
+./test > test.sym
+`
+
+In order to use these symbols with the `minidump_stackwalk` tool, you will need
+to place them in a specific directory structure. The first line of the symbol
+file contains the information you need to produce this directory structure, for
+example (your output will vary): `$ head -n1 test.sym MODULE Linux x86_64
+6EDC6ACDB282125843FD59DA9C81BD830 test $ mkdir -p
+./symbols/test/6EDC6ACDB282125843FD59DA9C81BD830 $ mv test.sym
+./symbols/test/6EDC6ACDB282125843FD59DA9C81BD830
+`
+
+You may also find the <a
+href='http://mxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/source/toolkit/crashreporter/tools/symbolstore.py'>symbolstore.py</a>
+script in the Mozilla repository useful, as it encapsulates these steps.
+
+## Processing the minidump to produce a stack trace
+
+Breakpad includes a tool called `minidump_stackwalk` which can take a minidump
+plus its corresponding text-format symbols and produce a symbolized stacktrace.
+It should be in the **google-breakpad/src/processor** directory if you compiled
+the Breakpad source using the directions above. Simply pass it the minidump and
+the symbol path as commandline parameters:
+`google-breakpad/src/processor/minidump_stackwalk minidump.dmp ./symbols
+` It produces verbose output on stderr, and the stacktrace on stdout, so you may
+want to redirect stderr.