Is a "bare-minimum" EurekaLog possible?

[aehimself 399]

Hello,

 

I was using MadExcept until now but it's limitations are growing on me slowly. First that it simply swallows TThread.FatalException which is an easy fix honestly, but still.

But yesterday when I started to experiment with nested exceptions and realized that MadExcept simply doesn't support this I started to look for alternatives.

 

I downloaded a trial of EurekaLog and while the settings look intimidating at a first glance, it seems to work as I expect.

Before I'm reaching out to their official support I would like to know if anyone managed to achieve is a bare-minimum Eurekalog functionality: no bug reports, no custom forms; ONLY stack traces for exceptions?

I'll continue to play around with the settings (Threads show no stack traces for now) but if someone knows what should I check and uncheck for the above I'd be able to experiment and decide if I'll switch a lot faster.

 

Thank you!

[David Heffernan 2353]

madExcept does support nested exceptions. 

[aehimself 399]

http://forum.madshi.net/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=28723

 

I have the same symptoms. This simple code:

procedure TForm1.FormCreate(Sender: TObject);

 Function RecExDump(E:Exception): String;
 Begin
  If Not Assigned(E) Then Exit('');

  Result := E.ClassName + ' - ' + E.Message + sLineBreak + E.StackTrace + sLineBreak + sLineBreak + RecExDump(E.InnerException);
 End;

begin
 Try
  Try
   Raise Exception.Create('Original');
  Except
   Exception.RaiseOuterException(EListError.Create('Outer'));
  End;
 Except
  On E:Exception Do ShowMessage(RecExDump(E));
 End;
End;

Shows both exceptions without MadExcept enabled and with EurekaLog. If MadExcept is enabled, EecExDump only sees the outer exception,

[David Heffernan 2353]

And what about Mathias' response in that thread? 

[aehimself 399]

Which response you mean? To create a bug report and parse it's text from code?

[David Heffernan 2353]

I guess that like Mathias I don't understand the use case for the code which madExcept is making fail. 

[aehimself 399]

You don't have to. I just brought a minimum reproduceable code snipplet to show what built-in language feature is not supported by MadExcept.

[David Heffernan 2353]

Yes, I understand the behaviour, but I just don't know the use case. I guess it just be some exception handling model that I've never used. Like Mathias I tend to raise a new exception, or re-raise. But obviously breaking language feature is not desirable. 

[Stefan Glienke 2019]

I just checked:

The hooking that madExcept is doing in Exception.RaisingException causes Exception.SetInnerException to never be called - and that method is responsible to set the FInnerException field.

Regardless of the use case, I call this a bug.

[Anders Melander 1815]

26 minutes ago, Stefan Glienke said:

The hooking that madExcept is doing in Exception.RaisingException causes Exception.SetInnerException to never be called - and that method is responsible to set the FInnerException field.

Regardless of the use case, I call this a bug.

I agree. I believe it's been discussed with Mathias several times but for some reason he's not seen the light.

[Anders Melander 1815]

One thing to be aware of with EurekaLog is that it, in my experience, makes the link stage unbearable slow for large projects. This alone has made me replace it with madExcept in a few projects.

I have my small grievances with madExcept too though. In particular the fact that it pumps the message queue, for no good reason, when processing silent exceptions.

[aehimself 399]

17 hours ago, Anders Melander said:

One thing to be aware of with EurekaLog is that it, in my experience, makes the link stage unbearable slow for large projects.

My main home project atm is ~500k LOC if I'm not mistaken. Linking speed won't be an issue I presume.

 

If I'd be able to encrypt and patch the executable with the .MAP file I think it would be possible to disable all hooks and magic of MadExcept and use it only to fill the .StackTrace of exceptions (unit can be seen here). That'd be an acceptable solution too.

[David Heffernan 2353]

Encrypting the map file, and then decrypting on runtime doesn't add much security. Your map file would be readily reversible by any moderately skilled hacker. If you want to keep the map file private, don't add it to your exe and decode the stack trace addresses into method names when the bug report is sent to you. 

[Stefan Glienke 2019]

That's what the madCompileBugReport tool is for - you use madExcept with minimal debug info then the bugreport the application produces does not contain function names and such but using the tool turns it back into that - you need to have archived the map files for your released binaries though.

Edited April 19, 2021 by Stefan Glienke

[David Heffernan 2353]

4 hours ago, Stefan Glienke said:

That's what the madCompileBugReport tool is for - you use madExcept with minimal debug info then the bugreport the application produces does not contain function names and such but using the tool turns it back into that - you need to have archived the map files for your released binaries though.

Yes, this is precisely what I currently do

[David Heffernan 2353]

Just trying to use inner exceptions in my own project (which has madExcept) and also feeling the pain .....

[Anders Melander 1815]

31 minutes ago, David Heffernan said:

Just trying to use inner exceptions in my own project (which has madExcept) and also feeling the pain .....

Works for me. What's your problem?

type
  EInner = class(Exception);
  EOuter = class(Exception);
...
begin
  try
    raise EInner.Create('Inner');
  except
    Exception.RaiseOuterException(EOuter.Create('Outer'));
  end;
end;

 

[David Heffernan 2353]

In Pascal code Exception.InnerException is never assigned.

[Anders Melander 1815]

9 hours ago, David Heffernan said:

In Pascal code Exception.InnerException is never assigned.

Ah, yes; That's madExcept messing things up for everybody else. I thought you meant that madExcept didn't handle nested exceptions.

[David Heffernan 2353]

5 hours ago, Anders Melander said:

Ah, yes; That's madExcept messing things up for everybody else. I thought you meant that madExcept didn't handle nested exceptions.

No doubt I can get the information about the nested exceptions using ME code. 

 

I solved my problem a different way that was actually a bit more elegant and avoided the complexity of nested exceptions anyway.