Crash Reporting for raylib Games

raylib is a deliberately simple, dependency-light library for making games in C, prized for its minimalism. That philosophy shapes how you should approach crash reporting: a raylib game is a small native C program with no runtime safety net, crashing through signals like any C program, and a heavy crash framework would clash with the lean spirit of the library. Setting up crash reporting for a raylib game means adding a lightweight signal handler that captures the backtrace and context, keeping symbols, and staying as minimal as raylib itself.

raylib is minimal C, by design

raylib appeal is its simplicity: a small, focused C library with minimal dependencies that lets you make games without a heavy engine. A raylib game is a native C program, which means it has no managed runtime, no automatic exception handling, and no built-in crash reporting, crashes arrive as raw signals, a segmentation fault, an abort, just like any C program.

This minimalism is a feature, and your crash reporting should respect it. A bloated crash framework with many dependencies would undermine the lean, dependency-light reason you chose raylib in the first place. The right approach is a small, focused crash handler that does what is needed, catch the crash, capture the backtrace and context, send it, without dragging in heavy machinery. Crash reporting for raylib should feel as lightweight as the library.

Add a lightweight signal handler

Capture raylib crashes by installing signal handlers for the fatal signals on Unix-like platforms and a structured exception handler on Windows, exactly as for any C game, but kept minimal. When a crash occurs, the handler captures the signal, a backtrace, and basic context, then writes or sends a report before the process dies. This can be a small amount of code, in keeping with raylib spirit.

Keep the handler focused and dependency-light. You do not need an elaborate framework, you need to catch the fatal signals, walk the stack for a backtrace, and get that data off the machine. A compact crash handler that does exactly this fits a raylib project well, adding the crucial visibility into native crashes without compromising the minimal, no-heavy-dependencies philosophy that drew you to raylib.

Keep symbols for readable traces

A raylib game native backtrace is a list of addresses, meaningless without symbols, so keep the debug symbols for each build to symbolicate the backtraces into readable function names and line numbers. This is the same requirement as any native game: generate symbols, archive them keyed to the build version, and symbolicate incoming crashes against the matching build.

Even in a minimal raylib project, symbol management is non-negotiable, because without it your captured backtraces are just numbers. The good news is that for a small raylib game, symbol management is correspondingly simple, fewer build configurations and a smaller codebase mean less to manage. Keep the symbols, symbolicate the traces, and your lightweight crash capture produces readable, actionable reports that point straight at the line that crashed.

Capture platform and basics

raylib is cross-platform, running on desktop operating systems and able to target the web through WebAssembly, so capture the platform and OS, since a crash can be platform-specific. Capture the basic device context too, the CPU, GPU, and memory, since native and graphics crashes can cluster by hardware, but keep this lightweight in keeping with the project minimalism.

If you target the web through WebAssembly, that build runs in a browser with different constraints, so capture whether the build is native or web. For most raylib games, a modest set of context, platform, OS, basic hardware, build type, is enough to interpret crashes without over-engineering the capture. The aim is just enough context to diagnose crashes, matching raylib own philosophy of doing what is needed simply and no more.

Setting it up with Bugnet

Bugnet captures native crashes from your raylib game through lightweight signal and exception handlers that record the backtrace and context, with symbols kept per build for symbolication, so reports arrive readable. You attach the platform and basic device context, and reports flow into one dashboard, all without the heavy framework that would clash with raylib minimalism.

Group identical crashes into occurrence counts to prioritize, and because a raylib game is small and focused, your crash list tends to be focused too, the genuine native bugs worth fixing rather than a sprawl of unhandled cases. This gives a minimal C game the crash visibility it would otherwise completely lack, in a way that fits the lean, dependency-light spirit that made you choose raylib in the first place.

Keep it as simple as raylib

The guiding principle for raylib crash reporting is to match the library philosophy: simple, focused, and just enough. You do not need elaborate crash analytics for a small raylib game, you need to know when it crashes and where, which a lightweight handler plus symbols provides. Resist the urge to over-build, because a heavy crash system would defeat the minimalism that makes raylib pleasant.

This simplicity is also practical. A small raylib game from a solo developer benefits enormously from knowing its native crashes, which are otherwise completely invisible, and a lightweight setup delivers that knowledge with minimal effort and no heavy dependencies. Crash reporting that is as lean as raylib gives you the visibility you need to ship a stable C game while preserving exactly the simplicity and control that drew you to the library, which is the right balance for the kind of focused projects raylib is built for.

raylib is lean by design. Make its crash reporting lean too: catch the signal, keep the symbols, ship.