HISE Crash Reporter

[clevername27]

Has HISE crashed on you? Of course it has. Did it report anything to operating system? Of course not…where would the mystery be? Here to spoil all the fun is a crash reporter. So, at least you're not gaslit when you could swear HISE vanished from your screen. I'm on macOS, so no idea about other operating systems and I don't care.

---

Save the below as crash-handler.patch, then run git apply crash-handler.patch.

diff --git a/hi_backend/backend/BackendProcessor.cpp b/hi_backend/backend/BackendProcessor.cpp
index 3b45c6d2e..95b42bc1a 100644
--- a/hi_backend/backend/BackendProcessor.cpp
+++ b/hi_backend/backend/BackendProcessor.cpp
@@ -49,6 +49,47 @@ void printData()
 
 namespace hise { using namespace juce;
 
+namespace
+{
+void installBackendCrashHandler()
+{
+	static bool installed = false;
+
+	if (installed)
+		return;
+
+	installed = true;
+
+	SystemStats::setApplicationCrashHandler([](void*)
+	{
+		static bool handling = false;
+
+		if (handling)
+			return;
+
+		handling = true;
+
+		auto crashDir = File::getSpecialLocation(File::userApplicationDataDirectory)
+							.getChildFile("HISE")
+							.getChildFile("CrashLogs");
+
+		crashDir.createDirectory();
+
+		auto logFile = crashDir.getChildFile("HISE_CrashBacktrace.txt");
+		FileOutputStream stream(logFile);
+
+		if (stream.openedOk())
+		{
+			stream.setPosition(logFile.getSize());
+			stream << "----\n";
+			stream << Time::getCurrentTime().toString(true, true) << "\n";
+			stream << SystemStats::getStackBacktrace() << "\n";
+			stream.flush();
+		}
+	});
+}
+}
+
@@ -274,6 +315,8 @@ BackendProcessor::BackendProcessor(AudioDeviceManager *deviceManager_/*=nullptr*
   autosaver(this),
   pluginParameterRamp(this)
 {
+	installBackendCrashHandler();
+
 	//printData();

---

This writes crashes to ~/Library/Application Support/HISE/CrashLogs/HISE_CrashBacktrace.txt

[Christoph Hart]

@clevername27 doesn't macOS write the crash reports already automatically?

[clevername27]

@Christoph-Hart It doesn't always. I'll do a little more research, and post info on why. It's Apple's way of saying, "We're Apple, and we don't think you need to worry about this. Because we're Apple."

[clevername27]

@Christoph-Hart So…macOS only reports crashes that terminate the process via an unhandled exception/signal. It might not read it's head because one (or more) of these applied:

• HISE/JUCE intercepts the crash (custom crash handler) and exits cleanly, so CrashReporter never triggers.
• Running under Xcode/LLDB suppresses the system crash dialog and routes it to the debugger.
• It wasn’t a crash (hang, forced quit, graceful shutdown) → no CrashReporter event.

Reports are silent even when generated; they live in ~/Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports (visible in Console.app) and may not show a dialog.

That’s why the custom crash logger is useful: it captures a backtrace even when macOS doesn’t show or generate a report.

[Christoph Hart]

@clevername27 but 2 of the three reasons don't require a custom crash report (no crash => nothing to report. Running under debugger => even better diagnostics) and you're deliberately introducing the first reason with your custom crash handler :)