Mike Taylor | 1 Feb 2006 07:55
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Interesting article on how to (and how *not* to) get crash reports on OS X

Daring Fireball article:  
http://daringfireball.net/2006/01/smart_crash_reports

Way down deep in the article is a small excerpt of how to do it 
"properly":

> Other developers have devised their own systems. Michael Tsai’s 
> C-Command family of apps all contain a custom crash reporter, 
> MJTCrashReporter, of his own design. Even though I use SpamSieve and 
> BBAutoComplete constantly, and I beta test both applications, I have 
> never seen either of them crash — so I’ve never actually seen Tsai’s 
> crash reporter in action. I asked him how it works, and he replied:
>
>> When the application starts up, it uses signal (3) to  register for 
>> the signals that indicate crashes. When the app  crashes, it calls 
>> the signal handler, which launches  MJTCrashReporter and then quits 
>> the app. MJTCrashReporter waits  a second or two to give the system 
>> time to write the crash log  file, then it brings up its crash 
>> reporter window, pre-filled  with the default address from Address 
>> Book and the latest crash  log. To send the report, it makes an HTTP 
>> POST to  c-command.com. I treat most crash reports as regular tech  
>> support issues, so I have the server send them to me as e-mails  with 
>> the user’s address in the reply-to.
>
> Absolutely beautiful. Also: doesn’t interfere a whit with any other 
> software on the system. Tsai also pointed out another advantage to 
> rolling one’s own crash reporter system: backwards compatibility. 
> Unsanity’s SCR only works on 10.4 or later; Tsai’s works all the way 
> back to Mac OS X 10.2, which his applications still support.

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Gmane