Backtrace in C

November 15, 2020 - 1 min read

Reminder to self: remember CFLAGS=-g -Og -rdynamic to allow backtrace_symbols() to actually pretty print function names in stack traces.

Full example:

jocke@luthien:~/src/pim6sd [master]$ ./configure CFLAGS="-g -Og -rdynamic" && make V=1 clean all

Source code for stack tracer to instrument your code with:

#include <execinfo.h>

void print_trace(void)
{
    void *array[10];
    char **strings;
    int size, i;

    size = backtrace(array, 10);
    strings = backtrace_symbols(array, size);
    if (strings != NULL) {
        printf("Obtained %d stack frames.\n", size);
        for (i = 0; i < size; i++)
            printf("%s\n", strings[i]);

        free(strings);
    }
}