Crashpad

Crashpad is an open-source multiplatform crash reporting system written in C++ by Google. It supports macOS, Windows, and Linux, and features an uploader to submit Minidumps to a configured URL right when the process crashes.

To use the Crashpad backend with the Native SDK, configure the CMake build with the SENTRY_BACKEND=crashpad option. This will automatically create a crashpad_handler executable alongside the sentry library.

cmake -B build -D SENTRY_BACKEND=crashpad

The SDK will automatically look for a crashpad_handler executable in the same directory as the running application. It will also use the .sentry-native directory as its database by default, relative to the current working directory of your application. This location temporarily hosts Minidumps before they are uploaded to Sentry.

Both of these paths can be customized like this:

sentry_options_t *options = sentry_options_new();
sentry_options_set_handler_path(options, "path/to/crashpad_handler");
sentry_options_set_database_path(options, "sentry-db-directory");
sentry_init(options);

The crashpad handler executable must be shipped alongside your application so that it can be launched when initializing the SDK. The path is evaluated according to shell lookup rules at runtime.

It is advised to specify both the path to the crashpad_handler executable as well as the path to the database directory manually.

Known Limitations

When using the Crashpad backend on macOS, the duration and status of crashes sessions can not be reliably determined, and may be classified as abnormal exits instead.