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Is there a detailed specification of the minidump format used by google's breakpad tools? I need to create a minidump file based on a processor/os not currently supported by the breakpad client libraries, and I haven't yet found any concise documentation that describes the actual format of the minidump file itself.

This is an embedded system, and I don't have much to put in the dump file, mainly stack trace and status codes.

The breakpad client sources for existing platforms build the minidump writer into the exception handler, using system calls to gather the information. In my case I am not running the dumper in the exception handler so I am capturing the critical information and need to write the dump file later.

A pointer to a good explanation of the minidump format used by breakpad would be a big help.

Thomas Weller
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Jim B.
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1 Answers1

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I believe what you are looking for is the Windows minidump format. The documentation for Breakpad states:

The Breakpad processor can handle dumps in the minidump format, either generated by a Breakpad client “handler” implementation, or by another implementation that produces dumps in this format. The DbgHelp.dll!MiniDumpWriteDump function on Windows produces dumps in this format, and is the basis for the Breakpad handler implementation on that platform.

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The minidump format is essentially a simple container format, organized as a series of streams.

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The minidump format was chosen as Breakpad’s dump format because it has an established track record on Windows, and it can be adapted to meet the needs of theother platforms that Breakpad supports.

Chris Kline
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