1268966 - Remove Breakpad and replace crash detection functionality with PLCrashReporter

Status: RESOLVED FIXED

(Firefox for iOS :: General, defect)

Description

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

At this point, we're going to rely on Apple's crash reporting services for getting our crash information. This allows us to remove Breakpad if we wanted since we don't have a need at this time to send data to a Socorro instance. Some reasons why we'd want to remove Breakpad:

1. It's not well supported on iOS. Lacking in documentation and doesn't build properly when taken off the shelf.

2. We've had to add our own hacks to the library to get some functionality we needed such as an API for telling us if we've crashed without uploading the crash.

3. We maintain an Carthage dependency fork on our own that we pull into the project.

The only need for keeping Breakpad around was the modification we made to detect previous session crashes. I propose we swap the library with PLCrashReporter (https://www.plcrashreporter.org/). Some benefits:

1. Built for iOS/Mac from the start.
2. Is actively worked on and maintained by well respected members of the iOS/Mac community.
3. Already contains the functionality we hacked on top of Breakpad.
4. Used in the core of popular crash reporting products for iOS (Fabric/Crashlytics, HockeyApp)

If, down the road, we want to integrate with a Socorro instance, a shim could be provided to translate the formats into something Socorro could accept.

Comment 1

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

Attachment: Link to Github pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/pull/1763

Comment 2

[Emily Toop (:fluffyemily)]

Comment on attachment 8747249 [details] [review]
Link to Github pull-request: https://github.com/mozilla/firefox-ios/pull/1763

A real shame about not being able to include this in carthage. We should raise a follow up bug to carthegise this as soon as the project fixes it's build issues (or look at submitting a PR to make it carthage compatible)

Comment 3

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

Submitted an issue to their JIRA - https://opensource.plausible.coop/bugs/browse/PLCR-589

Comment 4

[Stephan Leroux [:sleroux]]

master b50a925bd30b1c6187a47a4eb78cf1ac7944824e