Ask A BotDebug 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.
The sentry-cli requires an Organization Auth Token so that Debug Information Files can be uploaded.
Source maps, while also being debug information files, are handled differently in Sentry. For more information see Source Maps in sentry-cli.
Not all debug information files can be used by Sentry. To see if they are usable or not, you can use the sentry-cli debug-files check command:
sentry-cli debug-files 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.
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 debug-files find command to look for them:
sentry-cli debug-files find <identifier>
Additionally, sentry-cli debug-files upload can automatically search for files in a folder or ZIP archive.
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 debug-files upload.
To create a source bundle, use the debug-files bundle-sources command on a list of debug information files:
# on the build machine:
sentry-cli debug-files bundle-sources /path/to/files...
# at any later time:
sentry-cli debug-files upload --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 debug-files upload 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 debug-files upload --include-sources /path/to/files...
Use the sentry-cli debug-files upload 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.
You need to specify the organization and project you are working with because debug information files work on projects. For more information about this refer to Working with Projects.
A basic debug file upload can be started with:
sentry-cli debug-files upload -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 debug-files upload -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)
There are a few options you can supply to the upload command:
--wait
Wait for server-side processing of uploaded files. By default, debug-files upload 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 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 debug-files 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.
--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.
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 debug-files upload ...
> 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 debug-files upload --symbol-maps path/to/symbolmaps path/to/debug/symbols
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.
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.
You need to specify the organization and project you are working with because ProGuard files work on projects. For more information about this refer to Working with Projects.
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
Additionally, you can associate the proguard mapping file to a specific release:
# Additionally create an association to the release my.app.id@1.0.0+1
sentry-cli upload-proguard \
--uuid A_VALID_UUID \
app/build/outputs/mapping/{BuildVariant}/mapping.txt \
--app-id my.app.id \
--version 1.0.0 \
--version-code 1
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.
--no-upload
Disables the actual upload. This runs all steps for the processing but does not trigger the upload. 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.
If you're using a build tool we don't support, or you prefer not to use Sentry's build tool plugins, you'll need to upload source bundle files manually.
See the build tool plugins we currently support here:
You can also upload ProGuard files manually with sentry-cli for any JVM-based language like Java or Kotlin.
Before you can upload source files, you must configure the Sentry CLI with the organization and project you are uploading bundle files for. See the CLI docs on Working with Projects to learn how to do this.
Run the debug-files bundle-jvm command to create a source bundle for a source directory.
sentry-cli debug-files bundle-jvm \
--output some/dir \
--debug-id A_VALID_UUID \
path/to/source/dir
You must provide the UUID of the source bundle for the Java/Android SDK to send. More details can be found in the Source Context docs for Java and the Source Context docs for Android.
The debug-files upload command allows you to upload the source bundle you created to Sentry.
sentry-cli debug-files upload \
--type jvm \
output/path/of/bundle-jvm/command
After the upload, Sentry will attach Source Context to future events.
To make sure these steps worked, check Project Settings > Debug Files in Sentry.io to see if the uploaded source bundle files are listed.
Our documentation is open source and available on GitHub. Your contributions are welcome, whether fixing a typo (drat!) or suggesting an update ("yeah, this would be better").