The Elements of Crash Dump Analysis Style
After looking at multitude of crash dump analysis reports from different companies and engineers I would like to highlight several rules for good analysis reports:
- Format your debugger output in fixed size font (Courier New or Lucida Console). This is very important for readability
- Bold and highlight (using different colors) important addresses or data
- Keep the same color for the same address or data consistently
- Use red color for bug manifestation points
- If you refer to some dump put a link to it
What is considered bad crash dump analysis style? These are:
- Variable size font (you copy your debugger output to Outlook e-mail as is and it is using the default font)
- Highlight the whole data set (for example, stack trace) in red
- Too much irrelevant information
As an example of the good style I advocate (albeit not perfect) please look at the previous post Crash Dump Analysis Case Study
These are my first thoughts about crash and memory dump analysis style and I continue to elaborate it and present more examples later.
- Dmitry Vostokov -