NDK Symbols

For Android applications, when native code is used it will be compiled into shared object files, usually with the symbol names removed. In order to replace the obfuscated data with a human-readable stacktrace, a shared object (.so) file containing those symbols is required.

Use the POST /ndk-symbol endpoint to upload shared object files from your build.

Compatibility

To use this API you will need:

• a compatible version of the BugSnag library in your app:

  • bugsnag-android v5.26.0+
  • bugsnag-flutter v2.3.0+
  • bugsnag-js (React Native) v7.17.4+
  • bugsnag-unity v7.1.1+
  • bugsnag-unreal-engine v1.5.1+

• (for On-premise) to be using a recent version of the Upload API (v3.2211.0+ single machine or v5.2211.0+ of clustered)

If you cannot use the latest API you need to use the legacy endpoint, see Legacy API. 

cURL example

Extracting symbols

The intermediate shared object files generated for an Android NDK build will contain the symbols. Since only symbols are required, it is recommend that you remove the executable code in order to reduce file size.

If you do not have an objcopy in your path you will be able to find one using find $ANDROID_HOME/ndk -iname "*objcopy" on macOS, Linux, and Cygwin. Note that for NDK version 23 and higher you should use llvm-objcopy while for version 22 and lower you must use objcopy (which is GNU objcopy).

Symbolication guide

See our symbolication guide for a higher-level overview of integrating uploads into your build systems to see full stacktraces for all your releases.

Legacy API

As noted above, the /so-symbol endpoint is for use if your tooling is not compatible with the /ndk-symbol endpoint.

There are two different types of mapping file that can be used to map a stack trace depending on what debug information is available in the shared object file:

• symbol mapping file: Contains all of the debug information required to map back to the original file, line and method.
• symbol table mapping file: Contains the information required to map back to the original method only.

In general the intermediate shared object files generated for an Android NDK build should contain the required details for a symbol mapping file but the shared object files generated for some native Android libraries, for example Unity libraries, will only contain the information for a symbol table mapping file.

Uploading symbol mapping files

To upload symbol mapping files, POST them to the /so-symbol endpoint of the upload server with the following parameters:

• soSymbolFile – the path to the shared object mapping file.
• apiKey – your BugSnag integration API key for this application.
• appId – the Android applicationId for this application.
• versionCode – the Android versionCode for this application release.
• arch – the architecture of the shared object that the symbols are for (e.g. x86, armeabi-v7a).
• sharedObjectName – the name of the shared object that the symbols are for.
• versionName (optional) – the Android versionName for this application release.
• projectRoot (optional) – a path to remove from the beginning of the filenames in the mapping file
• buildUUID (optional) – a UUID to identify this builds. This is required if you build multiple different apps with the same appId and versionCode. If you use this, you’ll also need to set the com.bugsnag.android.BUILD_UUID value in your AndroidManifest.xml.
• overwrite (optional) – overwrite any existing mappings for this version of your app.

If you are creating the shared object mapping files without using the BugSnag Android Gradle plugin then you must run the objdump command with the following parameters and save the output to a file:

If the output does not look like this it may be due to the objdump command being run on a shared object file where the debug symbols have been stripped. The command needs to be run against an intermediate shared object file that is output from the build process before the symbols are stripped.

The API also supports uploading compressed mapping files. For example, to compress the file using gzip:

Here’s an example request with curl:

If the file is accepted then an HTTP 200 response will be returned with the body “OK”.

If not, there are several possible problems which will be indicated with an HTTP 4XX response:

• duplicate shared object file – indicates that the file has already been uploaded. You can ignore this error by using the buildUUID parameter, or by using the overwrite parameter.
• invalid apiKey – indicates that the provided apiKey doesn’t correspond to an Insight Hub project.
• missing param – indicates that the appId or versionCode parameters are missing.
• Mapping file does not contain any debug info or lines – indicates that the mapping file is not in the correct format.
• Mapping file does not contain a debug info section – indicates that the debug_info section is missing (normally if --dwarf=info wasn’t passed to objdump).
• Mapping file does not contain a debug lines section – indicates that the debug_line section is missing (normally if --dwarf=rawline wasn’t passed to objdump).

Uploading symbol table mapping files

In some cases the shared object files don’t contain the full debug information required to map back to the original file, line and method but they do contain a symbol table which can be used to map the method. This is normally the case for native Android libraries in Unity.

To upload symbol table mapping files, POST them to the /so-symbol-table endpoint of the upload server (see parameters for Uploading symbol mapping files).

If you are creating the shared object mapping files without using the BugSnag Android Gradle plugin then you must run the objdump command with the following parameters and save the output to a file:

If the output does not look like this it may be due to the objdump command being run on a shared object file where the all the debug symbols have been stripped. The command needs to be run against an intermediate shared object file that is output from the build process before the symbols are stripped. For native Android Unity libraries the shared object files with the symbol table within them normally have a .sym.so file extension

The API also supports uploading compressed mapping files. For example, to compress the file using gzip:

Here’s an example request with curl:

If the file is accepted then an HTTP 200 response will be returned with the body “OK”.

If not, there are several possible problems which will be indicated with an HTTP 4xx response:

• duplicate shared object symbol table file – indicates that the file has already been uploaded. You can ignore this error by using the buildUUID parameter, or by using the overwrite parameter.
• invalid apiKey – indicates that the provided apiKey doesn’t correspond to an Insight Hub project.
• missing param – indicates that the appId or versionCode parameters are missing.
• mapping file does not contain a symbol table – indicates that the mapping file is not in the correct format.
• symbol table within mapping file does not contain function mappings – indicates that the symbol table doesn’t have any appropriate mappings. Often this is due to the symbols not being present in the shared object file.