Missing documentation about the SENTRY_PROFILER_BINARY_DIR and SENTRY_PROFILER_BINARY_PATH env variable

[Jimmy89]

Core or SDK?

Platform/SDK

Which part? Which one?

@sentry/profiling-node

Description

I was debugging errors from my webpack output (packing node_modules as well) for our lambda, as I received a missing SENTRY_FILE.node error.

After some debugging, I found out that the @sentry/profiling-node package dynamically lookup a compiled .node file, where the path can be set with SENTRY_PROFILER_BINARY_DIR or SENTRY_PROFILER_BINARY_PATH. However, I did not find any documentation within Sentry that these env variables exist.

Suggested Solution

Document these two variables.

[getsantry]

Assigning to @getsentry/support for routing ⏲️

[JonasBa]

@Jimmy89 We intentionally did not document this as we do not really want to encourage the usage - in most cases this should never be used. Is this something that you need in your project?

[Jimmy89]

@JonasBa yes, as we used webpack to minimize our build (a copy of our node_modules and code exceeded the 50mb zip file limit), we used webpack to minimize our build (including the node_modules artifacts). We got errors from the sentry package which stated that the binaries could not be found within the build path location (running within the lambda environment). Therefore, I started digging into the code to find a way to patch the lookup path for the binary. Resulting into finding these env variables, including the sentry-prune-profiler-binaries. By using both (env and pruner) I managed to create a very minimal and working package in our lambda, without monkey-patching any code.

We used the lambda layer, which should also have the binaries, but with the latest major version (v8) of Sentry EcmaScript code (which we use) we must apply the NPM modules way. In combination with a webpack build you must use those Sentry env variables. Therefore, I think it's good to document these, as it will help others.

[getsantry]

Routing to @getsentry/product-owners-sdks-web-frontend for triage ⏲️

[andreiborza]

Hi @Jimmy89, we have getsentry/sentry-javascript#13049 in our backlog aiming to create a dedicated layer for Lambda, but didn't get to it yet.

This might still be nice to document tho @JonasBa wdyt?

[JonasBa]

@andreiborza yes, I'm adding the doc today. I planned on adding it yesterday, but ended up prioritizing other work.

[JonasBa]

Added the documentation in #11382