Best crash reporting framework for .NET desktop applications?

Question

I've got a couple simple Windows Forms apps that I'd like to add crash reporting to. Something that will give me info on what crashes are happening on user's machines (wrt my app, of course), including stack traces, logs, and screenshots, and a UI component for asking the user whether they want to upload it, etc. My apps are free, so I'd prefer a free component, and something that included an online aggregator (like http://www.hoptoadapp.com/ for Rails) would be perfect. However, I've searched around and haven't seen anything like that for .NET. What would you guys suggest?

Answer 1

Take a peek at Elmah (Error Logging Modules and Handlers) - an application-wide error logging facility that is completely pluggable. It can be dynamically added to a running ASP.NET web application, or even all ASP.NET web applications on a machine, without any need for re-compilation or re-deployment.

Although geared for ASP.NET, it may give you some ideas regarding Winforms implementation of somthing similar.

Answer 2

Looks like there was a similar question asked and answered here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/49224/good-crash-reporting-library-in-c

Answer 3

Wumpus (aka Jeff Atwood) published some cool exception handling stuff years ago (it may have even been .net 1.1 days) but it is quite good and easy to use (and will convert to newer version of .net with success.) I am using it with an app I am writing...and since you get full source you can extend it easily.

Here is a link...

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/exception/ExceptionHandling.aspx

Oh yeah...the following link was the same library as above converted to c# and extended a bit...so choose your flavor.

http://www.codeproject.com/KB/exception/ErrorLoggingLibrary.aspx

Seth

Answer 4

There is a commercial alternative called {smartassembly} that does error reporting.