Is it a good practice to use Stack Trace libraries in a debug build?

Question

C++ / C#

Hello everyone

Is it good practice to use tools like Backward-cpp during application development ? And are there any unobvious pitfalls? (it is clear that compilation with the optimization flag turned off)

Also, in particular, Backward-cpp can hang callbacks on various system signals such as an unhandled exception or segfault.

Using the assert macro as an example:

// smartAssert.h

void smartAssert(bool expression)
{
    if (expression)
        return;

    using namespace backward;

    StackTrace stackTrace;
    stackTrace.load_here(32);

    Printer printer;
    printer.object = true;
    printer.color_mode = ColorMode::always;
    printer.address = true;

    printer.print(stackTrace, stdout);
}

// config.h

#ifdef DEBUG
#   include "external/backward/backward.cpp"
#endif

#ifdef DEBUG
#   include "SmartAssert.h"
#   define SMART_ASSERT(expression) do { smartAssert(expression); } while (0)
#else
#  define SMART_ASSERT(expression) do {} while (0)
#endif

Answer 1

This is normal practice. For example, your browser most likely uses just such a tool (if it is based on Chromium).