More unspecified crashes on Xcode 4.2

Question

I've been using Xcode to develop iPhone Apps for a couple of years now. In the last couple of months I've updated to Xcode 4.2 for iOS 5 development.

On previous versions of Xcode I've found it very rare that I get a crash without any log of where the error happened. With Xcode 4.2 / iOS 5 I find that I regularly get crashes without any log. I just end up with the code stopped in main.m with a message like "program received signal SIGABRT" (or a couple of other messages) but no log messages at all. (I'm looking in the "All Output" window at the bottom of the Xcode gui).

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

I'm sure in previous versions of Xcode I would see a far more informative message...

Is there something I'm missing in Xcode 4.2? Should I enable some extra debugging feature? Any way to get it to give more useful crash information? Or is this a know problem with iOS 5 / Xcode 4.2?

Thanks for any pointers...

Ukulele

Answer 1

You are not alone, I have found this too. I often find there is not enough information in the log to diagnose the crash with the lastest xcode. I have two tips that might help.

1. Run on the actual device. I often find for some reason I get more detailed logs when it crashes on the device.

   Worst case, you can go into the organiser and check the crash logs of the device, this will give you what thread crashed and what you call stacks looked like when it crashed.

2. Switch between the GDB and LLVM compiler and or debugger. I havent experitmented enough with this but I believe this has helped on occasion.

Decagram

Thanks. Glad to know I'm not going crazy! :) – Ukulele