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digitalmars.D.bugs - [Issue 11865] New: Unhandled exception does not show crash dialog

reply d-bugmail puremagic.com writes:
https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=11865

           Summary: Unhandled exception does not show crash dialog
           Product: D
           Version: D2
          Platform: All
        OS/Version: Windows
            Status: NEW
          Severity: normal
          Priority: P2
         Component: druntime
        AssignedTo: nobody puremagic.com
        ReportedBy: jminer7 gmail.com



I just spent a couple hours trying to figure out why a Windows program would
run from Command Prompt but not when double clicked from Explorer. Evidently,
trying to write to stdout results in Tango throwing an exception if the program
is started by double clicking, but not when run from the console.

It took me a while to figure out because by default a non-console program
silently swallows an unhandled exception, and the process just disappears.
Programs on Windows normally show a "ProgramName has stopped working" dialog
when they crash. This happens by default for any program (even console
programs) written in C, C++, or .NET without the programmer doing anything. I
believe Windows Error Reporting shows the dialog:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/desktop/bb513641%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

The crash dialog usually supports uploading stack traces to MS servers, but at
a minimum, the native crash dialog should show. (I would want to upload stack
traces to my own server instead of Microsoft's because you have to buy a
VeriSign certificate to access the traces on Microsoft's site. That would
probably take a separate project, like Google Breakpad.)

To reproduce, compile this program:

extern(Windows)
int MessageBoxW(void* hWnd, const(wchar)* lpText, const(wchar)* lpCaption, uint
uType);

void main() {
    throw new Exception("You can't see this.");
    MessageBoxW(null, "The program opened.", "Opened", 0);
}

using this command:

rdmd -ofmain.exe -L/EXETYPE:NT -L/SUBSYSTEM:WINDOWS:4.0 main.d

Try double clicking it in Explorer, and you don't see the message box or a
crash dialog.

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Jan 04 2014
next sibling parent d-bugmail puremagic.com writes:
https://d.puremagic.com/issues/show_bug.cgi?id=11865


Vladimir Panteleev <thecybershadow gmail.com> changed:

           What    |Removed                     |Added
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
           Keywords|                            |pull
                 CC|                            |thecybershadow gmail.com



08:51:42 EET ---
https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/pull/703

With this patch, we'll show the uncaught exception details in a standard
Windows message box. These are usually more useful than the standard Windows
crash dialog, since they contain the exception type, the exception message, and
(if the program was compiled with debug info), a stack trace.

Currently it is not possible to disable the D standard top-level exception
handler from within the program or via a compiler/linker switch. It is disabled
automatically if the program was started under a debugger, though.

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prev sibling next sibling parent d-bugmail puremagic.com writes:
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09:02:36 EET ---

 I would want to upload stack traces to my own server instead of Microsoft's


So, do I understand correctly that D's standard uncaught exception handler does
not apply to your problem, and you need uncaught exceptions to go to WER?

If so, would the standard uncaught exception handler being disabled when a
variable is present in the environment be an acceptable solution for you? Since
you mentioned a custom WER server, you're already using a custom configuration
on the users' PCs, so adding an environment variable shouldn't be very
different, right?

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prev sibling next sibling parent d-bugmail puremagic.com writes:
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Thanks for writing the patch. Sounds like a good improvement that I'll use
during development.

Reading about WER more, I think I'd rather bypass it and handle everything
myself. Could there be a way to set a delegate that is called when there is an
uncaught exception and have an easy way to get the exception type, name, and
stack trace?

In the delegate, I could start a helper process that reads the information from
the crashed process and uploads it (to avoid doing too much in a crashed
process). For others who want to use WER, it looks like they could call
WerReportCreate() and WerReportSubmit() from the delegate to trigger WER. The
default delegate could write the info to the console or show a dialog,
depending on whether there is a console. What do you think?

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prev sibling next sibling parent d-bugmail puremagic.com writes:
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Commits pushed to master at https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/commit/d251e4fa1f3298b07f2e57acc3c1c6ede48531b8
rt.dmain2: Fix Issue 11865 - Unhandled exception does not show crash dialog

If a console window is not present, display uncaught exceptions
in a standard Windows message box.

https://github.com/D-Programming-Language/druntime/commit/d0494632d6d7789fd4f94994ef52983935123052


Fix Issue 11865 - Unhandled exception does not show crash dialog

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prev sibling parent d-bugmail puremagic.com writes:
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10:18:46 EET ---


 Could there be a way to set a delegate that is called when there is an
 uncaught exception and have an easy way to get the exception type, name, and
 stack trace?


Yes. In fact, something like that existed in the runtime a while ago. However,
you can achieve mostly the same by writing your own WinMain as shown here:

http://dlang.org/windows.html

This page is a bit outdated. Note the exceptionHandler parameter: this is the
mechanism mentioned above that no longer works, and those overloads of
Runtime.initialize/terminate are now deprecated. (Martin Nowak removed them in
b95be7e55e57a4ff065f1dc5f3362fc476d85f4d. Before that, Walter Bright wrote in a
comment: "Note that if we get here, the runtime is in an unknown state. I'm not
sure what the point of calling dg is."). However, the general idea still works,
if you don't care about exceptions thrown during runtime initialization /
deinitialization (this includes static constructors/destructors). Just replace
the MessageBoxA call with your custom error-handling code.

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