Re: Re: Proposed Windows-specific change: Enable crash dumps (like core files)

On 11/23/2010 01:56 AM, Heikki Linnakangas wrote:
> On 22.11.2010 19:47, Robert Haas wrote:
>> I am as conservative about back-patching as anybody here, but
>> debugging on Windows is not an easy thing to do, and I strongly
>> suspect we are going to point people experiencing crashes on Windows
>> to this code whether it's part of our official distribution or not.
>
> This whole thing makes me wonder: is there truly no reliable, simple
> method to tell Windows to create a core dump on crash, without writing
> custom code for it. I haven't seen one, but I find it amazing if there
> isn't. We can't be alone with this.

Search for 'dbghelp.dll' on your average Windows system and you'll be
surprised how many apps use it. Steam (the software distribution system)
does, as does the Adobe Creative Suite on my machine.

If you're running in interactive mode with access to the user's display
you can use Windows error reporting. Services running in isolated user
accounts don't seem to be able to use that. In any case, windows error
reporting only collects *tiny* dumps with barely anything beyond the
stack contents; they're a nightmare to use, and really require psychic
powers and deep knowledge of scary Windows APIs for effective debugging.

--
Craig Ringer