Dump files and symbols

Dump files

You can visit this article to get more information on what is a dump file and what is it for.

How to create a dump file with Visual Studio

The dump files created by Visual Studio have some extra features compared to the Windows Task Manager ones so, when possible, please try this method first.

  1. Start WLM in debug mode under Visual Studio.
  2. Reproduce the issue (make WLM crash).
  3. Pause/break debugging.
  4. Go to "Debug" -> "Save dump as" to save the dump file.
You can visit this article to get more information on creating dump files with Visual Studio.

How to create a dump file using the Windows Task Manager

Please, notice that the dump files resulting from this method are appreciable larger than the ones generated by Visual Studio.

  1. Reproduce the issue (make WLM crash).
  2. When the crash dialog appears, do not close WLM nor the crash dialog. Instead, open the task manager.
  3. Navigate to the "Processes" tab.
  4. Right-click on the process wlmail.exe to open a context menu and then select “Create Dump File”. Be sure to take note of where the dump file was saved.
          IMPORTANT: Dump files are useless without the appropriate WLMailApi symbol files. Please read about symbols below.

Symbol files

You can visit this article to get more information on what is a symbol file.

Do I need to send the symbol files with my dump file?

Every time we make a new build of WLMailApi here in Nektra, we store the symbol files corresponding to that build so we can use them later for debugging. If you didn't recompile WLMailApi (i.e. you are using the WLMailApi binaries shipped with our installer), then you don't need to send us any symbol files since we already have them. Anyway, don't forget to tell us what version of WLMailApi you are using. That way we will know which symbol files to use.

How to get the symbol files for a WLMailApi build

WLMailApi symbol files are created every time WLMailApi is built. They consist in a set of files which should be found in the output folder of the WLMailApi solution/project. These are the files:

  • WLMailApiAgent.pdb
  • WLMailApiCom.pdb
  • WLMailApiCore.pdb
  • WLMailApiInit.pdb
  • WLMailApiLoader.pdb
  • WLMailApiStore.pdb
Notice that the symbol files are unique to each compilation process (regardless of the source code not being modified at all in between compilations), so every time you compile WLMailApi you will get a new set of symbol files which are not compatible with any other WLMailApi binary files than the ones that were just built.

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