oxidecomputer / oxidecomputer/helios

Figure out pstack and Rust strip = "symbols" interaction

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Dominant language
Rust
Stars
481
Forks
21
Avg merge
1d 17h
Merged PRs (30d)
2

Description

(writing up a quick summary so I don't forget about this)

@jclulow reported to me that a hung nextest process didn't show its symbols in pstack. It turned out that was because the build process we were using within nextest was stripping all symbols.

I tried switching to strip = "debuginfo" but that didn't seem to help. The only thing that caused stacks to show up in pstack was strip = "none".

In https://github.com/nextest-rs/nextest/commit/d4f982b3184f07ff5c40cc90c52d3fc6567be0b9#commitcomment-140289873, Taiki believes that this is a bug (there was apparently a similar bug in MSVC as well.) I tried setting up a small project to investigate:

https://github.com/sunshowers/pstack-test

but found that even with the strip-symbols profile (which activates strip = "symbols"), pstack could show function symbols. Not quite clear why that would be happening though!

Contributor guide

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First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with the issue's observations about Rust's strip settings and the linked pstack-test project, then review the referenced nextest commit discussion. Reproduce the difference between strip = "symbols", strip = "debuginfo", and strip = "none" with pstack; done means the interaction and cause are explained clearly.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
rust
Domain
devtools, operating-systems
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
5/5
Estimated time
Over a week
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
25/100

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