Debugging from DAW Crash report

[A Former User]

Hello
Cubase crashes with my fx plugin. Is there anyway to debug from DAW crash reports?

[d.healey]

@Steve-Mohican Maybe, you should use a debug build of your plugin to get more info.

[A Former User]

@d-healey It's good to know that we have this option.
How can I do that? With only enabling debug mode in scripting settings?
So if the plugin crashes, where will the log file located?

[d.healey]

@Steve-Mohican

How can I do that?

That depends on your OS.
On Windows I think you have to edit the batch file that HISE generates and replace the word "Release" with "Debug"

On MacOS you have to select build for running in Xcode.

So if the plugin crashes, where will the log file located?

You'd need to ask Steinberg. If it was me I'd run Cubase the command line and it will output directly to the console in realtime.

[A Former User]

If it was me I'd run Cubase the command line and it will output directly to the console in realtime.

Hmm interesting, can I open Cubase with command line in Windows?

[d.healey]

@Steve-Mohican I don't know, try it and see.

[A Former User]

@d-healey Ok thank you, I'll try...

[Casey Kolb]

Cubase crashes with my fx plugin. Is there anyway to debug from DAW crash reports?

@Steve-Mohican Yes, you can absolutely debug from a DAW crash report, but you need to be using a symbolicated version of your plugin when it crashes. To export a symbolicated plugin, you'll want your autogenerated Projucer file (found in the Binaries folder) to look like the screenshot below and then you must click the XCode button at the top and build from XCode with Product > Build For > Profiling.

When the crash report is symbolicated, you can look at the crashed thread and try to gauge what C++ function calls are executed before the plugin crashed.

[Casey Kolb]

So if the plugin crashes, where will the log file located?

@Steve-Mohican Crash logs can be found in the Mac Console app, which should list all the most recent crashes under "User Reports". It might be different depending on the computer, but I can always find mine here:

[A Former User]

@Lunacy-Audio Thank you so much Casey, that helped a lot!! Wonderful! I am using Windows so I need to add those same flags to VS2017 Release version, right?

[Casey Kolb]

@Steve-Mohican I have yet to try on Windows! But I can imagine it's something similar. Maybe this forum post might provide some leads:

https://forum.juce.com/t/guide-symbolicating-release-builds/27151

[A Former User]

@Lunacy-Audio Thank you!

[d.healey]

@Steve-Mohican It's just the debug build I mentioned earlier.

[Casey Kolb]

@Steve-Mohican It's just the debug build I mentioned earlier.

@d-healey I think it's slightly different, but correct me if I'm wrong. The Debug will be far less optimized than the symbolicated Release build, which may prevent you from testing it in a more realistic context. Sometimes crashes will only happen in Release builds and not the Debug because the Debug is so bloated and slow that the threading issues may not occur as they normally would. Just some food for thought. Probably a good idea to test in both.

[d.healey]

@Lunacy-Audio You're probably correct, the debug build has no optimisation.