The Bug Validator API

 

There are some features of Bug Validator that are useful to call directly from your program.

 

Bug Validator has an API that makes this possible; just include svlBVAPI.c and svlBVAPI.h to your codebase. There is no library to link to, dlls to copy.

 

 

Source files

 

The source files can be found in the API directory in the Bug Validator install directory.

 

 svlBVAPI.h

 svlBVAPI.c

 

Just add these files to your project and build.
 
If you are using precompiled headers you will need to disable them for svlBVAPI.c.

 

 

Working with services?

 

If you are working with services you to attach Bug Validator to a service and to start Bug Validator, you should use the NT Service API, not the functions in this API.

 

All the other functions in this API can be used with applications and with services.

 

 

Unicode or ANSI?

 

All the API functions are provided in Unicode and ANSI variants where strings are used. We've also provided a character width neutral #define in the same fashion that the Windows.h header files do.

 

For example the function for naming a thread is provided as bvSetThreadNameA(), bvSetThreadNameW() with the character width neutral bvSetThreadName() mapping to bvSetThreadNameW() for unicode and bvSetThreadNameA() for ANSI.

 

In this document we're going to use TCHAR like the Window.h header files do.

 

 

Deploying on a customer machine

 

You can use the API without incurring any dependency on Bug Validator.

 

If Bug Validator is not installed on the machine the software runs on, nothing will happen.

 

This allows you to add the Bug Validator API to your software without need to have a separate builds for use with and without Bug Validator.

 

 

Loading the Profiler

 

For most use cases won't need to load the profiler, as the profiler will have been loaded when your launched your program from Bug Validator, or when you injected into your program using Inject or Wait For Application.

 

However if you're running your program from outside of Bug Validator and want to load the profiler from inside your program you can use bvLoadProfiler() to do that. You'll then need to call bvStartProfiler() to start it.

 

 

Starting the Profiler

 

To start the profiler from your API code you need to call the function bvStartProfiler() from your code before you call any API functions. Ideally you should call this function as early in your program as possible.

 

If you prefer to start the profiler from the user interface or command line you can omit the bvStartProfiler() call. You can leave it present if you wish to start Bug Validator from your program.

 

 

Naming threads

 

You can name threads using the bvSetThreadNameA() and bvSetThreadNameW() functions.

 

 

Turning data collection on and off

 

You can turn data collection on and off using the bvSetCollect() function.
 
You can use bvGetCollect() to inspect the data collection status.