Sentry SDK for C, C++ and native applications.
The Sentry Native SDK is an error and crash reporting client for native applications, optimized for C and C++. Sentry allows to add tags, breadcrumbs and arbitrary custom context to enrich error reports. Supports Sentry 20.6.0 and later.
Using the sentry-native
SDK in a standalone use case is currently an experimental feature. The SDK’s primary function is to fuel our other SDKs, like sentry-java
or sentry-unreal
. Support from our side is best effort and we do what we can to respond to issues in a timely fashion, but please understand if we won’t be able to address your issues or feature suggestions.
The SDK can be downloaded from the Releases page, which also lists the changelog of every version.
The SDK bundle contains the following folders:
external
: These are external projects which are consumed via
git submodules
.include
: Contains the Sentry header file. Set the include path to this
directory or copy the header file to your source tree so that it is available
during the build.src
: Sources of the Sentry SDK required for building.ndk
: Sources for the Android NDK JNI layer.The SDK currently supports and is tested on the following OS/Compiler variations:
Additionally, the SDK should support the following platforms, although they are not automatically tested, so breakage may occur:
The SDK supports different features on the target platform:
curl
library available. On other platforms, library users need to
implement their own transport, based on the function transport
API.The SDK is developed and shipped as a CMake project. CMake will pick an appropriate compiler and buildsystem toolchain automatically per platform, and can also be configured for cross-compilation. System-wide installation of the resulting sentry library is also possible via CMake.
Building the Crashpad Backend requires a C++14
compatible compiler.
Build example:
# configure the cmake build into the `build` directory, with crashpad (on macOS)
$ cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=RelWithDebInfo
# build the project
$ cmake --build build --parallel
# install the resulting artifacts into a specific prefix (use the correct config on windows)
$ cmake --install build --prefix install --config RelWithDebInfo
# which will result in the following (on macOS):
$ exa --tree install
install
├── bin
│ └── crashpad_handler
├── include
│ └── sentry.h
└── lib
├── cmake
│ └── sentry
├── libsentry.dylib
└── libsentry.dylib.dSYM
Please refer to the CMake Manual for more details.
Android:
The CMake project can also be configured to correctly work with the Android NDK, see the dedicated CMake Guide for details on how to integrate it with Gradle or use it on the command line.
The ndk
folder provides Gradle project which adds a Java JNI layer for Android, suitable for accessing the sentry-native SDK from Java. See the NDK Readme for more details about this topic.
MinGW:
64-bits is the only platform supported for now. LLVM + Clang are mandatory here : they are required to generate .pdb files, used by Crashpad for the report generation.
For your application to generate the appropriate .pdb output, you need to activate CodeView file format generation on your application target. To do so, update your own CMakeLists.txt with something like target_compile_options(${yourApplicationTarget} PRIVATE -gcodeview)
.
If you use a MSYS2 environement to compile with MinGW, make sure to :
MINGW_ROOT
(ex : C:/msys64/mingw64
)mingw64.exe
: pacman -S --needed - < ./toolchains/msys2-mingw64-pkglist.txt
# Configure with Ninja as generator and use the MSYS2 toolchain file
$ cmake -GNinja -Bbuild -H. -DCMAKE_TOOLCHAIN_FILE=toolchains/msys2.cmake
# build with Ninja
$ ninja -C build
MacOS:
Building universal binaries/libraries is possible out of the box when using the
CMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES
define, both with the Xcode
generator as well
as the default generator:
# using xcode generator:
$ cmake -B xcodebuild -GXcode -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="arm64;x86_64"
$ xcodebuild build -project xcodebuild/Sentry-Native.xcodeproj
$ lipo -info xcodebuild/Debug/libsentry.dylib
Architectures in the fat file: xcodebuild/Debug/libsentry.dylib are: x86_64 arm64
# using default generator:
$ cmake -B defaultbuild -DCMAKE_OSX_ARCHITECTURES="arm64;x86_64"
$ cmake --build defaultbuild --parallel
$ lipo -info defaultbuild/libsentry.dylib
Architectures in the fat file: defaultbuild/libsentry.dylib are: x86_64 arm64
Make sure that MacOSX SDK 11 or later is used. It is possible that this requires
manually overriding the SDKROOT
:
$ export SDKROOT=$(xcrun --sdk macosx --show-sdk-path)
The following options can be set when running the cmake generator, for example
using cmake -D BUILD_SHARED_LIBS=OFF ..
.
SENTRY_BUILD_SHARED_LIBS
(Default: ON):
By default, sentry
is built as a shared library. Setting this option to
OFF
will build sentry
as a static library instead.
If sentry is used as a subdirectory of another project, the value BUILD_SHARED_LIBS
will be inherited by default.
When using sentry
as a static library, make sure to #define SENTRY_BUILD_STATIC 1
before including the sentry header.
SENTRY_PIC
(Default: ON):
By default, sentry
is built as a position independent library.
SENTRY_EXPORT_SYMBOLS
(Default: ON):
By default, sentry
exposes all symbols in the dynamic symbol table. You might want to disable it in case the program intends to dlopen
third-party shared libraries and avoid symbol collisions.
SENTRY_BUILD_RUNTIMESTATIC
(Default: OFF):
Enables linking with the static MSVC runtime. Has no effect if the compiler is not MSVC.
SENTRY_LINK_PTHREAD
(Default: ON):
Links platform threads library like pthread
on unix targets.
SENTRY_BUILD_FORCE32
(Default: OFF):
Forces cross-compilation from 64-bit host to 32-bit target. Only has an effect on Linux.
CMAKE_SYSTEM_VERSION
(Default: depending on Windows SDK version):
Sets up a minimal version of Windows where sentry-native can be guaranteed to run.
Possible values:
5.1
(Windows XP)5.2
(Windows XP 64-bit / Server 2003 / Server 2003 R2)6.0
(Windows Vista / Server 2008)6.1
(Windows 7 / Server 2008 R2)6.2
(Windows 8.0 / Server 2012)6.3
(Windows 8.1 / Server 2012 R2)10
(Windows 10 / Server 2016 / Server 2019)For Windows versions below than 6.0
it is also necessary to use XP toolchain
in case of MSVC compiler (pass -T v141_xp
to CMake command line).
SENTRY_TRANSPORT
(Default: depending on platform):
Sentry can use different http libraries to send reports to the server.
curl
library for HTTP handling. This requires
that the development version of the package is available.winhttp
system library, is only supported on
Windows and is the default there.SENTRY_BACKEND
(Default: depending on platform):
Sentry can use different backends depending on platform.
sentry-native
without a backend, so it does not handle
crashes at all. It is primarily used for tests.SENTRY_INTEGRATION_QT
(Default: OFF):
Builds the Qt integration, which turns Qt log messages into breadcrumbs.
SENTRY_BREAKPAD_SYSTEM
(Default: OFF):
This instructs the build system to use system-installed breakpad libraries instead of using the in-tree version.
SENTRY_TRANSPORT_COMPRESSION
(Default: OFF):
Adds Gzip transport compression. Requires zlib
.
Feature | Windows | macOS | Linux | Android | iOS |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Transports | |||||
- curl | ☑ | ☑ | (✓) | ||
- winhttp | ☑ | ||||
- none | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ☑ | ☑ |
Backends | |||||
- inproc | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ☑ | |
- crashpad | ☑ | ☑ | ✓ | ||
- breakpad | ✓ | ✓ | ☑ | (✓) | (✓) |
- none | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
Legend:
☑ default
✓ supported
unsupported
SENTRY_FOLDER
(Default: not defined):
Sets the sentry-native projects folder name for generators which support project hierarchy (like Microsoft Visual Studio).
To use this feature you need to enable hierarchy via USE_FOLDERS
property
CRASHPAD_ENABLE_STACKTRACE
(Default: OFF):
This enables client-side stackwalking when using the crashpad backend. Stack unwinding will happen on the client's machine
and the result will be submitted to Sentry attached to the generated minidump.
Note that this feature is still experimental.
SENTRY_SDK_NAME
(Default: sentry.native or sentry.native.android):
Sets the SDK name that should be included in the reported events. If you're overriding this, make sure to also define
the same value using target_compile_definitions()
on your own targets that include sentry.h
.
sentry
: This is the main library and the only default build target.crashpad_handler
: When configured with the crashpad
backend, this is
the out of process crash handler, which will need to be installed along with
the projects executable.sentry_test_unit
: These are the main unit-tests, which are conveniently built
also by the toplevel makefile.sentry_example
: This is a small example program highlighting the API, which
can be controlled via command-line parameters, and is also used for
integration tests.A minimal working example looks like this. For a more elaborate example see the example.c file which is also used to run sentries integration tests.
sentry_options_t *options = sentry_options_new();
sentry_options_set_dsn(options, "https://YOUR_KEY@oORG_ID.ingest.sentry.io/PROJECT_ID");
sentry_init(options);
// your application code …
sentry_close();
Other important configuration options include:
sentry_options_set_database_path
: Sentry needs to persist some cache data across application restarts, especially for proper handling of release health sessions. It is recommended to set an explicit absolute path corresponding to the applications cache directory (equivalent to AppData/Local
on Windows, and XDG_CACHE_HOME
on Linux). Sentry should be given its own directory which is not shared with other application data, as the SDK will enumerate and possibly delete files in that directory. An example might be $XDG_CACHE_HOME/your-app/sentry
.
When not set explicitly, sentry will create and use the .sentry-native
directory inside of the current working directory.sentry_options_set_handler_path
: When using the crashpad backend, sentry will look for a crashpad_handler
executable in the same directory as the running executable. It is recommended to set this as an explicit absolute path based on the applications install location.sentry_options_set_release
: Some features in sentry, including release health, need to have a release version set. This corresponds to the application’s version and needs to be set explicitly. See Releases for more information.before_send
or on_crash
hook. It will also lose any events that have been queued for
sending at time of crash.sentry-native
registers a WER (Windows Error
Reporting) module, which signals the crashpad_handler
to send a minidump when a fast-fail crash occurs
But since this process bypasses SEH, the application local exception handler is no longer invoked, which
also means that for these kinds of crashes, before_send
and on_crash
will not be invoked before
sending the minidump and thus have no effect.Please see the contribution guide.