Meta issue about Symbolication and Source Context

[bruno-garcia]

This issue hopes to summary and collect all things related to:

1. Symbolication (line numbers and paths done server side)
2. Source Context (through source bundle, embedded source or source link)

In December version 3.25.0 the SDK started sending debug_meta:

• feat: debug images for Portable PDB #2050

With this and related changes in the backend, we got support for server side symbolication. Where clients without the pdb sitting next to the exe/dll get line numbers and file paths for Portable PDB format.

That also adds support for nuget.org and Microsoft symbol server. Which is now added by default to all new Sentry projects. With this, we get line numbers and paths for framework libraries. The .NET Runtime itself sends data to the Microsoft symbol server. Sentry SDK itself sends to nuget.org:

• feat(symbols): default symbol repository nuget.org sentry#44417
• Stop embedding PDBs #2166

We considered not sending debug_meta:

• Consider NOT sending debug images in certain cases #2227

On 3.29.1 through the following PR we can get source context for .NET Framework on Windows PDB (but no line numbers/path server side, see above).

• Get Debug ID for Full PDB format on Windows #2222

Known issues

In the process we found out we don't support Windows PDBs for .NET (we do for native Windows apps):

• https://github.com/getsentry/team-stacktrace/issues/41

.NET MAUI Android specifically has a source context issues:

• Missing source context with MAUI apps #2177 (fixed)

AOT support

iOS runs on AOT and that's not supported at the moment (aka: MonoAOT)

• Symbolication for AOT-compiled stack traces on iOS #2180

.NET Native AOT (new .NET AOT, not UWP ".NET Native"): Support is not required/planned yet. Shouldn't be error'ing out with processing errors, though.

• Support Native AOT on .NET 7+ #2247

SourceLink: Stack Trace Linking and Source Context

Work to rely on sourcelink to fetch sources and add as source context was done but the feature isn't completed yet. Related work:

• Support .NET SourceLink symbolic#735
• feat: source context links support symbolicator#1034
• rfc(feature): Source context via links rfcs#74

The changes in symbolic could add the URLs to the event payload so we can render 'stack trace linking'.
Reference PRs in Sentry to add Stack Trace Linking to other platforms:

• feat(issues): Add stacktrace-link API call for mobile platforms sentry#42117
• fix(issues): Fix undefined projects error sentry#42167
• ref(stacktrace-link): stacktrace link tests for Android, Cocoa and Flutter sentry#41936

We can send sourcelink information from the client, without the need to upload symbols. This will reach a lot more devs since setting up symbol upload is still not in the main onboarding process.
Experiment done in 2019:

• feat: Send sourcelink URL in event #230
• When sourcelink data is available send with event #400

[mattjohnsonpint]

Update:

Source link is fully working for frames marked "in_app": true. However, we mostly need source link to work for system frames, not in-app frames. New issue opened to track this change request in Symbolicator:

• Follow source links for not-in-app frames symbolicator#1214

[jamescrosswell]

@bruno-garcia it looks like the only stuff left on the list is related to AOT, which I think would have to wait until v4.0 right?

Can we close this meta issue?