Making a PDB storage to allow using Win crash dumps

Started by Crimson Wizard, Fri 23/11/2012 08:04:08

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Crimson Wizard

When AGS crashes on Windows, it writes crash dump, but that is unusable unless you have an MSVS program database file (*.pdb) which timestamp matches engine executable.
This means even if you have engine source, you still won't be able to use crash dump written by games run on their own.

Since people still report crashes in AGS games made by official CJ's engine versions, I think it would be helpful to have those pdbs uploaded somewhere on the shared location.
Don't know if that violates AGS license somehow, hopefully not?
I PMed Pumaman about this, but perhaps there are people who may contact him faster?

This also relates to any future engine versions that will be released. For every "official" Windows release there should be corresponding *.pdb file stored somewhere.

NOTE: It is still possible to do this workaround:
Build engine on your own, send it to the user and ask him to repeat the crash with the new engine, get new crash dump and use it with your built engine's pdb.
This method has two drawbacks: it is inconvenient, and also it won't allow to reproduce behavior with 100% match (if the crash does not happen on the same moment, it does not mean problem was fixed).

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