parse_exception thrown inside astra_initialize

Technical Support & Q&A Advanced
1

I just found out that SDK initialization throws a C++ exception internally, which is caught by my Visual Studio debugger.

My environment is:
Windows 7 64-bit
AstraSDK-0.4.0-20151014T193329Z-win32
Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition
32-bit C++ application, Debug configuration
Running with debugger (using F5 key)

Program execution breaks with message:

Exception thrown at 0x7578C42D in MyApp.exe: Microsoft C++ exception: cpptoml::parse_exception at memory location 0x0028D4D0.

If there is a handler for this exception, the program may be safely continued.

Stack:

KernelBase.dll!7578c42d() Unknown
[Frames below may be incorrect and/or missing, no symbols loaded for KernelBase.dll]
orbbec_hand.dll!01ecd53f() Unknown
orbbec_hand.dll!01ecf220() Unknown
[External Code]
Astra.dll!el::base::Writer::initializeLogger(const std::basic_string<char,std::char_traits,std::allocator > & loggerId, bool lookup, bool needLock) Line 4995 C++
[External Code]
orbbec_hand.dll!01edb3ab() Unknown
orbbec_hand.dll!01eb857c() Unknown
Astra.dll!astra::plugin_manager::try_load_plugin(const std::basic_string<char,std::char_traits,std::allocator > & path) Line 97 C++
Astra.dll!astra::plugin_manager::load_plugins(std::basic_string<char,std::char_traits,std::allocator > searchPath) Line 23 C++
Astra.dll!astra::context_impl::initialize() Line 55 C++
Astra.dll!astra_initialize() Line 24 C++
MyApp.exe!astra::Astra::initialize() Line 19 C++
(My code…)

It doesn’t matter if the camera is actually connected to my PC or not. It doesn’t matter if files “astra.log”, “profile_openni_sensor.txt”, “profile_orbbec_hand.txt” are present in working directory or not.

When running my program without debugger (Ctrl+F5), execution continues successfully. While debugging, I can still press Continue and move on. I understand that you may use C++ exceptions internally in the SDK and this is OK. But please note that configuring Visual Studio debugger to break when any exception is thrown is a useful feature, while this SDK behavior interferes with it. Moreover, using exceptions is often recommended for reporting serious errors, not just a state in normal program flow. So I think it would be nice if SDK didn’t throw this exception at every program startup.

2

Interesting. We use the cpptoml library to parse our configuration files at the moment which is the culprit throwing the exception. I agree that throwing exceptions during initialization is poor form and specifically can be extremely frustrating in VS C++. The issue you are experience seems to stem from either a missing or invalid astra.toml in your build directory. If you were to place one in that folder, you should see this exception disappear. I will look into avoiding this exception all together if the astra.toml (which is optional) is missing.