Core dump in Linux

Question

I want to create a core dump whenever my process crashes. Currently I am following this approach:

1. Build a special "debug" version of the program using "-g" of gcc/g++.
2. Execute "ulimit -c unlimited"
3. Now we get the core dump whenever the program crashes.

But I want to minimize the number of steps so that:

• Core dump should always get created. Even if it is "release" build. The user should not be asked to execute the command "ulimit -c unlimited" manually.
• That core dump's backtrace should be able to give the file, function, line number of the calls. That is stack trace in a human readable form.
• I don't want to build the program as a debug build with "-g". Or at least it shouldn't contain any other debugging information which is not required to produce the human readable stack trace. Because this would be a release build of the program.

So I have two questions:

1. How to create a core dump in the "release" build of a program?
2. Always. Without manually executing the "ulimit -c unlimited"

Answer 1

• Regarding the core limit, you can do it yourself in C by calling setrlimit.
• On a GNU (glibc) or BSD system, you can get a backtrace by calling backtrace and related system calls. You will then have to translate the function addresses into function names by running addr2line (or duplicating its functionality).
• Just don't use -g, you can still get a backtrace (except that inlined functions will not appear).