More vague crashes on Xcode 4.2

Question

I have been using Xcode to develop iPhone applications for a couple of years. Over the past couple of months, I upgraded to Xcode 4.2 for iOS 5 development.

In previous versions of Xcode, I found that very rarely I get a crash without any kind of log where the error occurred. With Xcode 4.2 / iOS 5, I found that I regularly get crashes without any kind of log. I just ended up with the code stopped in main.m, with a message like "programmed SIGABRT signal" (or a few other messages), but no log messages at all. (I look in the "All weekend" window at the bottom of the Xcode gui).

For example, my last was where I used the initWithNibName: bundle: method, but typed the wrong nib name. The code went through this line without errors, but when I got to the pushViewController method: animated: the code crashed with a SIGABRT message, but no log messages. It took me a while to find my typo ...

I am sure that in previous versions of Xcode, I would see a much more informative message ...

Is there something I am missing in Xcode 4.2? Should I enable the extra debugging feature? Any way to get more helpful crash info? Or is this a problem with iOS 5 / Xcode 4.2?

Thanks for any pointers ...

Answer 1

You are not alone, I also found this. I often find that there is not enough information in the log to diagnose a crash using the latest xcode. I have two tips that can help.

• Launch on the device itself. I often find that for some reason I get more detailed logs when it crashes on the device.

  In the worst case scenario, you can go into the organizer and check the device’s crash logs, this will give you what the stream crashed and what you call the stacks looked when it crashed.

• Switch between the GDB compiler and LLVM and / or debugger. I am not sure about this, but I think that it helped sometimes.