Qt SIGABRT alternative message? - c++

Question

I'm using Qt5.9, a simple check:
assert(pobjNode != NULL);
Will cause the Qt Signal Received error dialog to be displayed which doesn't give any helpful information about where the problem is or what it is.
Is there a way to replace this useless information with something a bit more helpful?
What I'm thinking of is a way to set-up the dialog to display what could be an error in the event of an error.

Answer 1

Q_ASSERT is a custom assert macro which supposedly enhances the standard assert function.
The error message is handled by qFatal(), which can behave slightly better on some platforms than the standard assert macro. For example on Windows it will trigger the Visual Studio debugger at the point where the assertion fails instead of just calling abort().
You can also redirect the output of Qt error message functions such as qFatalto your custom message handler ( with qInstallMessageHandler() ). It can be useful for example if you want to redirect the errors message to a file.
Also note that Q_ASSERT is disabled with the macro QT_NO_DEBUG(while assert is disabled by NDEBUG) : this can be used to separate your asserts between Qt-related code and the rest.
Q_ASSERT_X Prints the message what together with the location where, the source file name and line number if test is false.
Prints the message what together with the location where, the source file name and line number if test is false.
Example:
// File: div.cpp
#include <QtGlobal>
int divide(int a, int b)
{
Q_ASSERT_X(b != 0, "divide", "division by zero");
return a / b;
}
to read more on test and debug.

Answer 2

You might define your own MY_ASSERT macro. On Linux it could even call another function which uses Glibc backtrace functions or Ian Taylor's libbacktrace library (provided your code is compiled with DWARF debug information using g++ -g) and perhaps display such information in a modal dialog, or on stderr. However, it should probably not return. Read also about Qt and Unix signals and signal-safety(7).
But assert detects a bug which you should correct. Try hard to avoid shipping code with such programmer bugs.
On Linux, the usual assert -it is a macro defined in /usr/include/assert.h- will call on failure __assert_fail (in your C library, but you might redefine it yourself) which would indirectly call abort which indirectly makes a core dump which you can inspect post-mortem using the gdb debugger. You only need to enable core dumps (using ulimit -c builtin in your bash terminal).