Announcing ratos: A shell to Decode iPhone Stack Traces

Posted by face on February 06, 2009

I’m pleased to give you ratos, a shell to speed iPhone development by decoding an entire stack trace at once using atos. Of course as it relies on atos, so it only works on a Mac with Xcode installed.


 [301] tako:~>  ratos

App Name:TheSnapper
App Path:/Users/face/proj/TheSnapper

Paste xcode stack trace to stdin, then type 'sim' or 'arm' on a line by itself.
  Type 'exit' or '^D' to quit and 'app' to print the current app.

ratos>2009-02-05 10:21:31.107 TheSnapper[751:20b] Stack: (
    808221155,
    806100816,
    808224973,
    807957033,
    807851552,
    25785,
    22599,
    22855,
    807923363,

arm

-[BackViewController doubleSnapAction:] (in TheSnapper) (BackViewController.m:192)
-[BackViewController resetAllSiders] (in TheSnapper) (BackViewController.m:126)
-[BackViewController resetSnap:] (in TheSnapper) (BackViewController.m:138)


When I first learned iPhone development it took me a while to find atos. Exception handling comes natural but Xcode spits out addresses in their stack traces. After much googling I finally found atos. I then immediately found Apple’s docs to integrate atos into an exception handler. Cool….NOT!

Turns out Apple’s Xcode integration relies on /usr/bin/atos at runtime….not possible on my iPhone.

So, I immediately wrote a quick and dirty shell in Ruby that takes a stack trace in from xcode, and prints out any lines that have symbols. Gobbledygook in, nice human readable stack trace out!

After enjoying ratos for the past few months I finally had a chance today to clean it up a little and publish it on github.

To use it, first install it on your path.: 
git clone git://github.com/face/ratos.git
sudo cp ratos/bin/ratos /usr/local/bin/.
There are a couple environment variables that can be used to configure ratos. Also, if ratos happens to be installed in a project under the directory bin it will self configure. If your application name and directory name are the same and ratos is installed in a shared location like /usr/local/bin, you only need to set RATOS_APP_PATH: 
# csh
setenv RATOS_APP_PATH ~/proj/TheSnapper

# or bash
export RATOS_APP_PATH=~/proj/TheSnapper
If your application name is different than the directory name, you can also set RATOS_APP_NAME. Here are some real world examples of how I start up the ratos shell: 
 [303] tako:~>  echo $RATOS_APP_PATH
/Users/face/proj/TheSnapper
 [304] tako:~>  ratos

App Name:TheSnapper
App Path:/Users/face/proj/TheSnapper

Paste xcode stack trace to stdin, then type 'sim' or 'arm' on a line by itself.
  Type 'exit' or '^D' to quit and 'app' to print the current app.

ratos>exit

 [305] tako:~>  env RATOS_APP_PATH=~/proj/IttyBooks ratos

App Name:TheSnapper
App Path:~/proj/IttyBooks

Paste xcode stack trace to stdin, then type 'sim' or 'arm' on a line by itself.
  Type 'exit' or '^D' to quit and 'app' to print the current app.

ratos>exit

 [306] tako:~>  env RATOS_APP_PATH=~/proj/IttyBooksFree RATOS_APP_NAME=IttyBooks ratos

App Name:IttyBooks
App Path:~/proj/IttyBooksFree

Paste xcode stack trace to stdin, then type 'sim' or 'arm' on a line by itself.
  Type 'exit' or '^D' to quit and 'app' to print the current app.

ratos>exit
And finally, here is an example interaction: 
 [307] tako:~>  ratos

App Name:TheSnapper
App Path:/Users/face/proj/TheSnapper

Paste xcode stack trace to stdin, then type 'sim' or 'arm' on a line by itself.
  Type 'exit' or '^D' to quit and 'app' to print the current app.

ratos>2009-02-05 10:21:31.107 TheSnapper[751:20b] Stack: (
    808221155,
    806100816,
    808224973,
    807957033,
    807851552,
    25785,
    22599,
    22855,
    807923363,
    816119156,
    816119004,
    816157144,
    8381,
    8244
)
terminate called after throwing an instance of 'NSException'

arm

-[BackViewController doubleSnapAction:] (in TheSnapper) (BackViewController.m:192)
-[BackViewController resetAllSiders] (in TheSnapper) (BackViewController.m:126)
-[BackViewController resetSnap:] (in TheSnapper) (BackViewController.m:138)
main (in TheSnapper) (main.m:14)
start (in TheSnapper) + 52

ratos>exit

Enjoy!


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