Category Archives: Symbols

Please Restore Our Registers When You’re Done With Them

Posted on November 21, 2022 by brucedawson

“Hey, you. Yes you, that function over there. When you’re cleaning up please remember to restore all of my registers. Yes, that one too – what do you think this is, Linux?” That’s the problem I was dealing with in … Continue reading →

Posted in Chromium, Debugging, Investigative Reporting, Symbols | Tagged , , | 23 Comments

Determinism Bugs, Part Two, Kernel32.dll

Posted on January 6, 2022 by brucedawson

It was literally the day after I cracked the __FILE__ determinism bug that I hit a completely different build determinism issue. I was asked to investigate why the Chrome build number reported for Chrome crashes on Windows 11 was lagging … Continue reading →

Posted in Bugs, Chromium, Computers and Internet, Investigative Reporting, Programming, Symbols | Tagged , , | 19 Comments

Arranging Invisible Icons in Quadratic Time

Posted on February 16, 2021 by brucedawson

Near the end of January I was pointed to a twitter thread where a Windows user with a powerful machine was hitting random hangs in explorer. Lots of unscientific theories were being proposed. I don’t generally do random analysis of … Continue reading →

Posted in Investigative Reporting, Performance, Programming, Quadratic, Rants, Symbols | Tagged , | 18 Comments

Creating a Public Symbol Server, Easily

Posted on March 14, 2020 by brucedawson

I’ve been a big fan of symbol servers for years. They are a part of the Microsoft/Windows ecosystem that is far better than anything I have seen for other operating systems. With Microsoft’s and Chrome’s symbol servers configured I can … Continue reading →

Posted in Debugging, Programming, Symbols, uiforetw | Tagged | 15 Comments

New Xperf and new WPA in the new WPT

Posted on August 10, 2015 by brucedawson

A new version of Windows means a new version of the Windows Performance Toolkit (WPT), the ship vehicle for xperf, WPA and other Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) tools. I’m a huge fan of xperf/ETW (just look at some of … Continue reading →

Posted in Symbols, xperf | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Debugging Optimized Code–New in Visual Studio 2012

Posted on September 11, 2013 by brucedawson

For years (decades?) one of the most requested features in Visual C++ has been better support for debugging optimized code. Visual Studio’s debug information is so limited that in a program that consists just of main(argc, argv) the VS debugger … Continue reading →

Posted in Programming, Symbols | Tagged , , , , , | 35 Comments

Symbols the Microsoft Way

Posted on March 9, 2013 by brucedawson

Symbol servers allow developer tools on Windows to automatically find symbols (debug information). All you have to do is adjust the tool’s settings to point at the Microsoft/Chrome/whatever symbol server and the appropriate symbols will be automatically downloaded. The Chromium … Continue reading →

Posted in Symbols, Visual Studio | Tagged , , , , | 68 Comments

Symbols on Linux update: Fedora Fixes

Posted on March 5, 2013 by brucedawson

I wrote last month about the challenges of obtaining Linux symbols based on a build ID. I’m now pleased to say that getting Linux symbols based on a build ID is trivial on both Ubuntu and Fedora – things are … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Symbols | Tagged , , , , , , | 12 Comments

Symbols on Linux Part Three: Linux versus Windows

Posted on February 20, 2013 by brucedawson

After many years programming solely on Windows I have recently started working on Linux. This is the third post in a series of tutorials that will share what I have learned about handling Linux symbols. This third post explains how … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Symbols | Tagged , , , | 35 Comments

Symbols on Linux Part Two: Symbols for Other Versions

Posted on January 19, 2013 by brucedawson

After many years programming solely on Windows I have recently started working on Linux – Ubuntu to be precise. This is the second post in a series of tutorials that will share what I have learned about handling Linux symbols. … Continue reading →

Posted in Linux, Symbols | Tagged , , , , , , , | 10 Comments