Overview

Error Tracking uses stack traces on error spans to fingerprint errors, group them into issues, and show where they occurred. This page describes which span attribute Error Tracking reads for the stack trace, and how that varies by your service’s language and tracer version.

Stack trace span attributes

An error span reports its stack trace in the error.stack span attribute. For most tracers, error.stack contains the stack trace captured when the error was handled (for example, at a catch block or middleware). This isn’t always where the error was thrown.

For Go services instrumented with dd-trace-go v2.7.0 or later, the handling stack trace is reported separately, in the error.handling_stack attribute. In this case, error.stack instead contains the stack trace captured at the point the error was thrown, if available.

Which stack trace is used by Error Tracking

For Go services

For Go services, Error Tracking has a fallback mechanism to decide which stack trace to use:

• Go tracer v2.7.0 and later:
  • The throwing stack is reported in error.stack. This stack is used if available.
  • The handling stack is reported in error.handling_stack. This stack is used if the throwing stack is not available.
• Go tracer earlier than v2.7.0:
  • The throwing stack is reported in error.details. This stack is used if available.
  • The handling stack is reported in error.stack. This stack is used if the throwing stack is not available.

For all other languages

For all other languages, the handling stack is captured and reported in error.stack. This attribute is used by Error Tracking to group issues and derive information such as the suspect commit.

Further Reading

Additional helpful documentation, links, and articles:

Learn about Error Tracking for Backend ServicesDOCUMENTATION Learn about Error GroupingDOCUMENTATION