How do I reliably get Instruments 4.x to symbolicate?

Question

I have a bit of a dilemma — no matter what I do, I cannot get Apple's Instruments.app to symbolicate any of the included instruments while I'm profiling on my devices (it works OK in the iOS Simulator).

I've tried just about everything I can think of, including:

• Checking that I'm actually building a dSYM
• Switching between Debug and Release build schemes
• Making sure that the signing certificate being used in my Development cert
• Adding and removing my Derived Data folder from Spotlight's Privacy list
• Clean & Build before profiling
• Removing the Derived Data folder before building and profiling

I'm not sure where to go from here — I had symbols for an hour or two earlier in the week, but I just can't get them to show up at all anymore. It would be great to figure out what the mystical incantation is to make Instruments always find my app's symbols.

Camden

Answer 1

In the File menu there is an option for Re-Symbolicate Document. Choosing this, you can find your binary in the list and use the Locate button to specify the location of the dSYM manually. There is also a checkbox here for using Spotlight to find the dSYM; it's possible it got deactivated if Spotlight was borked at some point but is now fixed.

It seems that you cannot do this while Instruments is actually instrumenting, but it does seem to keep the setting for the next time you hit Record. It does not, however, seem to remember the setting after you close Instruments.

Deboer

Thanks Anomie — I ended up finding much the same answer: tonyarnold.com/post/3627/… – Camden

@TonyArnold: Yoo bad you hadn't come back here to post the answer, or I wouldn't have had to figure it out myself too ;) – Deboer

I am not able to do this, when I select the dsym instruments says that: "Re-Symbolication requires MyApp.app.dSYM and AppleProfileKEventAction to have matching UUIDs. " – Marlomarlon

I am facing the same issue. My binary is not showing up in the list – Switcheroo

If it's not showing up, try to change provisioning to development – Cornwall

If it's not showing up in the list, go back to Xcode and change the Target's Code Signing Identity for Release to a Developer profile (not distribution). – Saul

Answer 2

Did you ensure you are signing the app with a development profile (as opposed to a distribution profile)? Be aware that you are usually using release builds with instruments so make sure you didn't choose a distribution profile for your release configuration...

Gewirtz

This is a really old question, and a some of the issues here were probably being caused by bugs in the toolchain at the time (requiring the workarounds I linked to in the promoted answer above). I'm not sure that this question is really relevant anymore, as it's been a long time since I've had problems symbolicating. Thanks for posting, though :) – Camden

This did it for me. I was going crazy with tons of other posts about spotlight, re-symbolication, etc. All it came down to is that Profile runs your Release configuration and we had Release set to Distribution for Ad Hoc distribution. When I set Release to use Developer, it worked like a charm. Thanks @Dan! – Commendation

Plus one for that. I'd forgotten that my Release build certificate had changed back from developer to distribution when I updated the project file from git. Thanks! – Murry

Answer 3

I've seen Instruments 4.2 fail to symbolicate several times with the correct dSYM file.

After saving and quit/restart Instruments, it will then symbolicate.

(Sometimes I'll capture a small sample and make sure it works before collecting large samples.)

Brennen

Answer 4

Aside from xcode's tools, you can use atos: https://mcmap.net/q/80371/-symbolicating-iphone-app-crash-reports

Be sure to take slide into account as well: https://mcmap.net/q/81580/-ios-crash-reports-atos-not-working-as-expected

(I'm adding this information to several related questions that are related to that, but aren't exactly duplicate questions. This is copy-pasted, it's a honest attempt to help someone who googled that question rather then spam.)

Canonicals