In computing, a stack trace (also called stack backtrace or stack traceback) is a report of the active stack frames at a certain point in time during the execution of a program. (Reference, Wikipedia)
We see this question coming up a few times when stack traces are being queried about one particular crash — usually in order to get help to fix a software bug
Let’s take a step back first: what does a stack trace mean in programming terms?
Put simply; a machine leaves a trail of bread crumbs to get the way back from the deep levels of breaking down of a complex task to binary ANDs, ORs and NOTs that can be executed by the processor. Usually, this trail stays invisible, but when the software crashes, a human readable version of it gets written into the logs — and sometimes to the screen — to help the debugging process.
As a developer, when you get a stack trace, you first read it. Up to thousands of lines intended to be dealt with by the machine, describing a trail through several source files, libraries and frameworks that describe a story of a crash. It contains a message that hopefully helps a lot, but the most important thing that you look for is the way to fix the bug.
Samebug focuses on this aspect of stack traces. We vision it as a platform that tells you what to do without manually analysing the stack trace or start debugging when there is a solution available, or other developers faced the same issue before.
Most of you met Samebug as an exception database when you were looking for a solution on your favourite search engine. Some of you use for searching for your full stack trace to get the most relevant solutions.
You can try out our Stack Trace Search for free to see for yourself, we’ve included not just our users feedback on your Stack Trace but we also search other online platforms for you!
As usual, if you have any questions about this feel free to reach out to us at community@samebug.io or drop us a comment down below! If you liked this content, don’t forge to give this article a clap and share it on your favourite social networks!
