Debug Information Files

Debug information files allow Sentry to extract stack traces and provide more information about crash reports for most compiled platforms. sentry-cli can be used to validate and upload debug information files. For more general information, refer to Debug Information Files.

Permissions

The sentry-cli requires an Auth Token to be authenticated with a set of Permissions & Scopes so that Debug Information Files can be uploaded. To do this, you must have either a project:releases or project:write Scope.

Checking Files

Not all debug information files can be used by Sentry. To see if they are usable or not, you can use the sentry-cli difutil check command:

sentry-cli difutil check mylibrary.so.debug

Debug Info File Check
  Type: elf debug companion
  Contained debug identifiers:
    > 924e148f-3bb7-06a0-74c1-36f42f08b40e (x86_64)
  Contained debug information:
    > symtab, debug
  Usable: yes

This will report the debug identifiers of the debug information file as well as if it passes basic requirements for Sentry.

Finding Files

If you see in Sentry's UI that debug information files are missing, but you are not sure how to locate them, you can use the sentry-cli difutil find command to look for them:

sentry-cli difutil find <identifier>

Additionally, sentry-cli upload-dif can automatically search for files in a folder or ZIP archive.

Creating Source Bundles

To get inline source context in stack traces in the Sentry UI, sentry-cli can scan debug files for references to source code files, resolve them in the local file system and bundle them up. The resulting source bundle is an archive containing all source files referenced by a specific debug information file.

This is particularly useful when building and uploading debug information files are detached. In this case, a source bundle can be created when building and can be uploaded at any later point in time with sentry-cli upload-dif.

To create a source bundle, use the difutil bundle-sources command on a list of debug information files:

# on the build machine:
sentry-cli difutil bundle-sources /path/to/files...

# at any later time:
sentry-cli upload-dif --type sourcebundle /path/to/bundles...

To create multiple source bundles for all debug information files, use the command on each file individually.

Alternatively, add the --include-sources option to the upload-dif command, which generates source bundles on the fly during the upload. This requires that the upload is performed on the same machine as the application build:

sentry-cli upload-dif --include-sources /path/to/files...

Uploading Files

Use the sentry-cli upload-dif command to upload debug information files to Sentry. The command will recursively scan the provided folders or ZIP archives. Files that have already been upload are skipped automatically.

We recommend uploading debug information files when publishing or releasing your application. Alternatively, files can be uploaded during the build process. See Debug Information Files for more information.

A basic debug file upload can be started with:

sentry-cli upload-dif -o <org> -p <project> /path/to/files...

> Found 2 debug information files
> Prepared debug information files for upload
> Uploaded 2 missing debug information files
> File processing complete:

  PENDING 1ddb3423-950a-3646-b17b-d4360e6acfc9 (MyApp; x86_64 executable)
  PENDING 1ddb3423-950a-3646-b17b-d4360e6acfc9 (MyApp; x86_64 debug companion)

After the upload, Sentry analyzes the files to symbolicate future events. If you want to send a native crash to Sentry to verify correct operation, ensure that the debug files are listed in Project Settings > Debug Files. Alternatively, specify --wait in the CLI, which will block until server-side analysis is complete:

sentry-cli upload-dif -o <org> -p <project> --wait /path/to/files...

> Found 2 debug information files
> Prepared debug information files for upload
> Uploaded 2 missing debug information files
> File processing complete:

      OK 1ddb3423-950a-3646-b17b-d4360e6acfc9 (MyApp; x86_64 executable)
      OK 1ddb3423-950a-3646-b17b-d4360e6acfc9 (MyApp; x86_64 debug companion)

Upload Options

There are a few options you can supply to the upload command:

--wait

Wait for server-side processing of uploaded files. By default, upload-dif completes once the debug files have been uploaded to Sentry. After this, Sentry analyzes the files and makes them available for symbolication. It makes sense to specify --wait to ensure that debug files are ready before sending crashes to Sentry. This may slow down the command and is not recommended for CI builds.

--no-upload

Disables the actual upload. This runs all steps for the processing but does not trigger the upload (this also automatically disables reprocessing). This is useful if you just want to verify the setup or skip the upload in tests.

--no-unwind

Do not scan for stack unwinding information. Specify this flag for builds with disabled FPO, or when stack walking occurs on the device. This usually excludes executables and libraries. They might still be uploaded, if they contain debug information.

--no-debug

Do not scan for debug information. This will usually exclude debug companion files. They might still be uploaded, if they contain stack unwinding information.

--include-sources

Scans the debug files for references to source code files. If referenced files are available on the local file system, they are bundled and uploaded as a source archive. This allows Sentry to resolve source context. Only specify this command when uploading from the same machine as the build. Otherwise, use difutil bundle-sources to generate the bundle ahead of time.

--derived-data

Search for dSYMs in the derived data folder. Xcode stores its build output in this default location.

--no-zips

By default, sentry-cli will open and search ZIP archives for debug files. This is especially useful when downloading builds from iTunes Connect or prior build stages in a CI environment. Use this switch to disable if your search paths contain large ZIP archives without debug files to speed up the search.

--force-foreground

This option forces the upload to happen in the foreground. This only affects uploads invoked from Xcode build steps. By default, the upload process will detach when started from Xcode and finish in the background. If you need to debug the upload process it might be useful to force the upload to run in the foreground.

--info-plist

Overrides the search path for Info.plist, useful if it is located in a non-standard location.

--no-reprocessing

This parameter prevents Sentry from triggering reprocessing right away. It can be useful under rare circumstances where you want to upload files in multiple batches and you want to ensure that Sentry does not start reprocessing before some optional dSYMs are uploaded. Note though that someone can still in the meantime trigger reprocessing from the UI.

--symbol-maps

Resolve hidden symbols in iTunes Connect builds using BCSymbolMaps. This is needed to symbolicate crashes if symbols were not uploaded to Apple when publishing the app in the AppStore.

Symbol Maps

If you are hiding debug symbols from Apple, the debug files will not contain many useful symbols. In that case, the sentry-cli upload will warn you that it needs BCSymbolMaps:

sentry-cli upload-dif ...
> Found 34 debug information files
> Warning: Found 10 symbol files with hidden symbols (need BCSymbolMaps)

In this case, you need the BCSymbolMaps that match your files. Typically, these are generated by the Xcode build process. Supply the --symbol-maps parameter and point it to the folder containing the symbol maps:

sentry-cli upload-dif --symbol-maps path/to/symbolmaps path/to/debug/symbols

Breakpad Files

In contrast to native debug files, Breakpad symbols discard a lot of information that is not required to process minidumps. Most notably, inline functions are not declared, such that Sentry is not able to display inline frames in stack traces.

If possible, upload native debug files such as dSYMs, PDBs or ELF files instead of Breakpad symbols.

ProGuard Mapping Upload

sentry-cli can be used to upload ProGuard files to Sentry; however, in most situations, you would use the Gradle plugin to do that. Nevertheless, there may be situations where you would upload ProGuard files manually. For instance, when you only release some of the builds you're creating.

The upload-proguard command is the one to use for uploading ProGuard files. It takes the path to one or more ProGuard mapping files and will upload them to Sentry.

sentry-cli upload-proguard \
    app/build/outputs/mapping/{BuildVariant}/mapping.txt

Since the Android Sentry SDK needs to know the UUID of the mapping file, you need to associate it with the upload. However, you first have to place that UUID into the AndroidManifest.xml file:

<application>
  <meta-data android:name="io.sentry.proguard-uuid" android:value="A_VALID_UUID" />
</application>

The same UUID needs to be used to upload the mapping file:

sentry-cli upload-proguard \
    --uuid A_VALID_UUID \
    app/build/outputs/mapping/{BuildVariant}/mapping.txt

After the upload, Sentry deobfuscates future events. To make sure that it worked, you can check Project Settings > ProGuard and see if the upload mapping files are listed.

Upload Options

--no-reprocessing

This parameter prevents Sentry from triggering reprocessing right away. It can be useful under rare circumstances where you want to upload files in multiple batches and you want to ensure that Sentry does not start reprocessing before some optional dSYMs are uploaded. Note though that someone can still in the meantime trigger reprocessing from the UI.

--no-upload

Disables the actual upload. This runs all steps for the processing but does not trigger the upload (this also automatically disables reprocessing). This is useful if you just want to verify the mapping files and write the ProGuard UUIDs into a properties file.

--require-one

Requires at least one file to upload or the command will error.