ProtoBug

ProtoBug is a C/C++ library designed to track down errors in a binary game protocol. It provides opt-out detailed error messages that help identify and debug issues in the protocol.

Usage

To use the ProtoBug Library in your C/C++ project, follow these steps:

Clone the repository or download the library files.

git clone https://github.com/PaulJohnson1/proto-bug

Include the library header file in your code:

#include <pb.h>

Initializing the proto_bug struct:

static uint8_t  data[128 * 1024];
struct proto_bug test;
proto_bug_init(&test, data);

Writing data:

proto_bug_write_uint8(&test, 100, "uint8_test");
proto_bug_write_uint16(&test, 10000, "uint16_test");
proto_bug_write_uint32(&test, 1000000000, "uint32_test");
proto_bug_write_uint64(&test, 10000000000000, "uint64_test");
proto_bug_write_float32(&test, 12341.0123f, "float32_test");
proto_bug_write_float64(&test, 12341.01234, "some float 64");
proto_bug_write_varuint(&test, 100000000000000ull, "varuint_test");
proto_bug_write_string(&test, "test string", 11, "string_test");

Reading data:

uint8_t a = proto_bug_read_uint8(&test, "uint8_test");
uint16_t b = proto_bug_read_uint16(&test, "uint16_test");
uint32_t c = proto_bug_read_uint32(&test, "uint32_test");
uint64_t d = proto_bug_read_uint64(&test, "uint64_test");
float e = proto_bug_read_float32(&test, "float32_test");
float f = proto_bug_read_float32(&test, "some float 32"); // oops (error)!
uint64_t g = proto_bug_read_varuint(&test, "varuint_test");
char h[12] = {0};
proto_bug_read_string(&test, h, 11 /* bytes to read */, "string_test");

Error Message Format

The library outputs error messages in the following format: The error message consists of two parts:

1. Expected: encoding_type: float32 name: x position written_at: example.c:21: This part represents the expected value or data type that the program attempted to read.
2. Encountered: encoding_type: float32 name: y position read_at: example.c:35: This part represents the actual value or data type that was encountered during the read operation.

You might want to disable error verbose errors in production for several reasons:

1. With verbose error messages, it uses on average 8x more memory to store the debug information within the proto_bug bounds
2. It requires that the proto_bug struct contains a lot of debug information, such as file names and file lines, as well as the "name" of the value that the user reads/writes nside the message to send off to the clients

Disabling errors

• Errors are automatically disabled if the NDEBUG macro is defined as long as PROTO_BUG_FORCE_DEBUG is not defined
• Errors can be explicitly disabled if the PROTO_BUG_NDEBUG macro is defined