feat: merge tombstone and native sdk events #5037

supervacuus · 2026-01-19T15:23:18Z

📜 Description

This implements the second aspect of the tombstone integration: merging tombstone events with crash events coming from sentry-native. It does this in the following way:

No changes to the OutboxSender, but instead let TombstoneIntegration own the outbox folder before the OutboxSender operates on it (i.e., we rely on integration instantiation order and the fact that all async integration work is done on a single-threaded executor service).
NativeEventCollector implements the duplication wrt OutboxSender, but specifically for handling envelopes that contain native crashes
The upside is that we don't have to touch non-Android-specific code without making it more generic. If it turns out we want to extend OutboxSender later, that change wouldn't be a considerable effort.
Introduces a correlation id that allows us to map exactly between native SDK events and tombstones (vs correlating via timestamp). This requires changes to sentry-native, so for now it's only exposed but not used.
TombstonePolicy searches, matches, and merges events
merging is essentially: take the native SDK event and replace debugMeta, exception, and threads
Right now, these events will go through the same enrichment as the tombstones, which might or might not be the right choice

This is primarily an end-to-end implementation to discuss the trade-offs listed.

💡 Motivation and Context

This is the last essential step before releasing the tombstone integration to a wider audience. It maps directly to
Implement merge mechanism with the Native SDK envelope

💚 How did you test it?

only manually up to now
Once the direction is agreed on, will add unit+integration tests

📝 Checklist

I added GH Issue ID & Linear ID
I added tests to verify the changes.
No new PII added or SDK only sends newly added PII if sendDefaultPII is enabled.
I updated the docs if needed.
I updated the wizard if needed.
Review from the native team if needed.
No breaking change or entry added to the changelog.
No breaking change for hybrid SDKs or communicated to hybrid SDKs.

🔮 Next steps

decide on this approach or extending OutboxSender and surrounding infra more generically (we could introduce a callback for the core of the OutboxSender decision and set up integrations that use it accordingly)
decide merging strategy
decide on enrichment (maybe we should use a more default EventProcessor for merge events?)
Related to the above:
- Should correlation only be attempted for the latest tombstone?
- How should historical tombstones be matched? (Since we have all the actual data from the moment of the event in the native envelope, they will likely be more accurate for that moment in time vs backfilling, but we don't track the same amount of context information)
Add correlation id to the Native SDK

github-actions · 2026-01-19T15:23:41Z

Semver Impact of This PR

🟡 Minor (new features)

📋 Changelog Preview

This is how your changes will appear in the changelog.
Entries from this PR are highlighted with a left border (blockquote style).

New Features ✨

Merge tombstone and native sdk events by supervacuus in #5037

Allow setting native SDK name in manifest by bitsandfoxes in #5027

Build / dependencies / internal 🔧

Deps

Bump JamesIves/github-pages-deploy-action from 4.7.6 to 4.8.0 by dependabot in #5015
Update Native SDK to v0.12.3 by github-actions in #5012
Bump github/codeql-action from 4.31.8 to 4.31.10 by dependabot in #5032

Other

(release) Switch from action-prepare-release to Craft by BYK in #5014

_{🤖 This preview updates automatically when you update the PR.}

github-actions · 2026-01-19T15:23:46Z

	Messages
📖	Do not forget to update Sentry-docs with your feature once the pull request gets approved.

Generated by 🚫 dangerJS against 6befa43

supervacuus · 2026-01-19T15:24:41Z

@markushi and @romtsn, can you have a first look so we can discuss trade-offs? Thx!

github-actions · 2026-01-19T15:50:05Z

Performance metrics 🚀

	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
Startup time	320.09 ms	398.66 ms	78.57 ms
Size	1.58 MiB	2.20 MiB	637.07 KiB

Baseline results on branch: main

Startup times

Revision	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
`b77456b`	393.26 ms	441.10 ms	47.84 ms
`d217708`	409.83 ms	474.72 ms	64.89 ms
`abf451a`	332.82 ms	403.67 ms	70.85 ms
`d15471f`	286.65 ms	314.68 ms	28.03 ms
`ee747ae`	382.73 ms	435.41 ms	52.68 ms
`fc5ccaf`	279.11 ms	353.34 ms	74.23 ms
`d5a29b6`	298.62 ms	391.78 ms	93.16 ms
`1edbdfa`	364.77 ms	450.29 ms	85.52 ms
`d15471f`	294.13 ms	399.49 ms	105.36 ms
`27d7cf8`	306.76 ms	366.66 ms	59.90 ms

App size

Revision	Plain	With Sentry	Diff
`b77456b`	1.58 MiB	2.12 MiB	548.11 KiB
`d217708`	1.58 MiB	2.10 MiB	532.97 KiB
`abf451a`	1.58 MiB	2.20 MiB	635.29 KiB
`d15471f`	1.58 MiB	2.13 MiB	559.54 KiB
`ee747ae`	1.58 MiB	2.10 MiB	530.95 KiB
`fc5ccaf`	1.58 MiB	2.13 MiB	557.54 KiB
`d5a29b6`	1.58 MiB	2.12 MiB	549.37 KiB
`1edbdfa`	1.58 MiB	2.20 MiB	635.34 KiB
`d15471f`	1.58 MiB	2.13 MiB	559.54 KiB
`27d7cf8`	1.58 MiB	2.12 MiB	549.42 KiB

markushi

Looking quite promising already, I think this is the right track. Left a few comments for further discussion.

markushi · 2026-01-21T13:32:16Z

sentry-android-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/android/core/AndroidOptionsInitializer.java

+   */
+  private static void setNativeCrashCorrelationId(
+      final @NotNull Context context, final @NotNull SentryAndroidOptions options) {
+    final String correlationId = UUID.randomUUID().toString();


As anyone could call this API to store information, it might be a good idea to ensure it's our data we're reading back later. I guess a simple prefix could work e.g. sentry-app-run-<uuid>

True, and this is only meant as a proposal that survived from 2022:

processStateSummary is global and generally owned by the app

If we write into this, we should first check if there is already something in there

Even if nothing was in there, any later code can overwrite it without us knowing anything about it

The maximum length is 128 bytes, and writing into it is free-form, so there is no way for binary stability except if we communicate that Sentry owns this if you use the SDK (not sure if that is a good idea).

If we prefix it with something generic like sentry-app-run-, it shows that this might be used beyond native crash correlation (it will be accessible from any ApplicationExitInfo).

I implemented this because we considered it a stable correlation mechanism back then, but I think timestamp correlation is stable enough and doesn't depend on app-owned storage.

It's likely a good idea to drop this altogether, and if we introduce it, maybe together with other ApplicationExitInfo handlers?

markushi · 2026-01-21T13:34:17Z

sentry-android-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/android/core/TombstoneIntegration.java

      return new ApplicationExitInfoHistoryDispatcher.Report(event, hint, tombstoneHint);
    }
+
+    private SentryEvent mergeNaiveCrashes(


Suggested change

private SentryEvent mergeNaiveCrashes(

private SentryEvent mergeNativeCrashes(

markushi · 2026-01-21T13:38:02Z

sentry-android-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/android/core/NativeEventCollector.java

+        .getLogger()
+        .log(SentryLevel.DEBUG, "Scanning %d files in outbox for native events.", files.length);
+
+    for (final File file : files) {


I'm a bit worried of ending up with too many envelopes in memory here and potentially running into OOMs.

markushi · 2026-01-21T13:40:57Z

sentry-android-core/src/main/java/io/sentry/android/core/TombstoneIntegration.java

+        boolean deletionSuccess = nativeEventCollector.deleteNativeEventFile(matchingNativeEvent);
+
+        if (deletionSuccess) {
+          event = mergeNaiveCrashes(matchingNativeEvent.getEvent(), event);


Is there any specific information a native crash event could hold which is not available through the tombstone? I guess this is mainly about user-added context like e.g. breadcrumbs, right?

feat: merge tombstone and native sdk events

028f17b

add preliminary change log

6befa43

markushi reviewed Jan 21, 2026

View reviewed changes

	private SentryEvent mergeNaiveCrashes(
	private SentryEvent mergeNativeCrashes(

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📜 Description

💡 Motivation and Context

💚 How did you test it?

📝 Checklist

🔮 Next steps

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Semver Impact of This PR

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Performance metrics 🚀

Baseline results on branch: main

Startup times

App size

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