Embedding thread names in Windows minidump files

问题:

Our 32-bit C++ application names its threads using the standard approach on Windows. We generate minidumps when errors occur, but when the dumps are loaded into Visual Studio 2013 the thread names are missing. This makes it harder to debug the problem given the high number of threads present.

The only way I've heard of to improve this comes from this Microsoft User Voice posting, where the caller suggests embedding them in a custom stream, and writing a custom Visual Studio extension to rename the threads upon loading the dump. However, this seems cumbersome and apparently adds a lot of time to the loading process.

Is there an easier way to embed thread names in the dump so they "just work" when loading them in Visual Studio?

For reference: we use Visual Studio 2013 to build, our apps run on Win7 or higher, and we use Google Breakpad to generate dumps.

回答1:

Microsoft has indicated that the SetThreadDescription API will be the basis for any proper support they add in the future for thread names in dumps, debuggers, and/or analysis tools.

Unfortunately it appears that this API is rather new and is not yet supported in dumps, WinDbg, Visual Studio Debugger, etc. There is a User Voice request to add this support, so please vote for it if you would like a way to properly give threads a persistent name.

回答2:

After some more digging, it seems like one way to do this would be to store a pointer to the name in the ArbitraryUserPointer field of the TEB of the thread.

If the TEB was then embedded in the minidump (which can be achieved with the MiniDumpWithProcessThreadData flag, according to this article) then it seems like at the very least we could view the current thread name in the Visual Studio watch window by evaluating

(*(char **)(@TIB+0x14))

Perhaps a Visual Studio debugger add-on could be written to examine the contents of the TEB when a process is attached to, and use the exception 'hack' to set the name of the thread in the Threads window.