# panicwrap

panicwrap is a Go library that re-executes a Go binary and monitors stderr
output from the binary for a panic. When it find a panic, it executes a
user-defined handler function. Stdout, stderr, stdin, signals, and exit
codes continue to work as normal, making the existence of panicwrap mostly
invisble to the end user until a panic actually occurs.

Since a panic is truly a bug in the program meant to crash the runtime,
globally catching panics within Go applications is not supposed to be possible.
Despite this, it is often useful to have a way to know when panics occur.
panicwrap allows you to do something with these panics, such as writing them
to a file, so that you can track when panics occur.

panicwrap is ***not a panic recovery system***. Panics indicate serious
problems with your application and _should_ crash the runtime. panicwrap
is just meant as a way to monitor for panics. If you still thing this is
the worst idea ever, read the section below on why.

## Features

* **SIMPLE!**
* Works with all Go applications on all platforms Go supports
* Custom behavior when a panic occurs
* Stdout, stderr, stdin, exit codes, and signals continue to work as
  expected.

## Usage

Using panicwrap is simple. It behaves a lot like `fork`, if you know
how that works. A basic example is shown below.

Because it would be sad to panic while capturing a panic, it is recommended
that the handler functions for panicwrap remain relatively simple and well
tested. panicwrap itself contains many tests.

```go
package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"github.com/mitchellh/panicwrap"
	"os"
)

func main() {
	exitStatus, err := panicwrap.BasicWrap(panicHandler)
	if err != nil {
		// Something went wrong setting up the panic wrapper. Unlikely,
		// but possible.
		panic(err)
	}

	// If exitStatus >= 0, then we're the parent process and the panicwrap
	// re-executed ourselves and completed. Just exit with the proper status.
	if exitStatus >= 0 {
		os.Exit(exitStatus)
	}

	// Otherwise, exitStatus < 0 means we're the child. Continue executing as
	// normal...

	// Let's say we panic
	panic("oh shucks")
}

func panicHandler(output string) {
	// output contains the full output (including stack traces) of the
	// panic. Put it in a file or something.
	fmt.Printf("The child panicked:\n\n%s\n", output)
	os.Exit(1)
}
```

## How Does it Work?

panicwrap works by re-executing the running program (retaining arguments,
environmental variables, etc.) and monitoring the stderr of the program.
Since Go always outputs panics in a predictable way with a predictable
exit code, panicwrap is able to reliably detect panics and allow the parent
process to handle them.

## WHY?! Panics should CRASH!

Yes, panics _should_ crash. They are 100% always indicative of bugs.
However, in some cases, such as user-facing programs (programs like
[Packer](http://github.com/mitchellh/packer) or
[Docker](http://github.com/dotcloud/docker)), it is up to the user to
report such panics. This is unreliable, at best, and it would be better if the
program could have a way to automatically report panics. panicwrap provides
a way to do this.

For backend applications, it is easier to detect crashes (since the application
exits). However, it is still nice sometimes to more intelligently log
panics in some way. For example, at [HashiCorp](http://www.hashicorp.com),
we use panicwrap to log panics to timestamped files with some additional
data (configuration settings at the time, environmental variables, etc.)

The goal of panicwrap is _not_ to hide panics. It is instead to provide
a clean mechanism for handling them before bubbling the up to the user
and ultimately crashing.