02 February 2009, 16:14

Open source crash reporting for the iPhone (and OSX)

Landon Fuller has released a beta of Plausible CrashReporter (plcrashreporter), for the iPhone to simplify the process of getting crash reports from users. Currently, to get a crash report, a developer has to ask the user to sync their iPhone, look on the hard disk for the correct crash log and then get the user to send it to them. With Fuller's solution, an in process signal handler catches the crash and writes a crash report. When the application is run again, it can check for a crash report and submit the report via a HTTP server, an email, or store it locally.

The crash reporter encodes it's output in protobuf format and the files can be decoded using the PLCrashReporter library or any Google Protobuf compatible library. Fuller hopes in future versions to integrate the library with getexceptional's exception tracking service, allowing for fully automatic crash handling and tracking.

PLCrashReporter runs on the iPhone OS 2.0+ and on the iPhone simulator 2.0+. It also runs on Mac OS X 10.5, allowing Mac developers to use it to analyse their application crashing problems when they occur. The beta is aimed at developers, for them to evaluate, test and give feedback, and is available under the MIT licence.

(djwm)

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