> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://launchdarkly.com/docs/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Building GitHub Enhanced Stacktraces

export const BlogAuthor = ({date, avatar, alt, name}) => {
  return <div className="-mb-4">
      <p className="m-0 text-base font-semibold">
        <em>Published {date}</em>
      </p>
      <div className="flex items-center -mt-4">
        {avatar && <img src={avatar} alt={alt} className="h-8 w-8 rounded-full m-0" />}
        <p className="ml-[5px] text-lg">{name}</p>
      </div>
    </div>;
};

<View title="Developer" />

<View title="Federal docs" />

<View title="EU docs" />

<BlogAuthor date="October 13, 2023" avatar="/images/authors/spencer-amarantides.png" alt="portrait of Spencer Amarantides." name="by Spencer Amarantides" />

Do you enjoy seeing the code responsible for causing an error on your frontend stack traces? Do
you wish you could see the same context on your backend stack traces? Now you can with GitHub
enhanced stacktraces!

Sourcemaps are able to enhance your stack traces for frontend errors. Most backend languages are
compiled, causing us to miss out on those direct code mappings. As a result, the stack traces of
your backend errors appear empty and lack the context to debug an error from the LaunchDarkly app.
Until now! We've built a way to provide you with the extra context on your backend errors, so you
can triage, debug, and solve more efficiently.

<Frame caption="Backend stack trace enhanced with source code context fetched from GitHub.">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/launchdarkly/AAfzx725JxtBqiAm/images/tutorials/github-enhanced-stacktraces/enhancement.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=AAfzx725JxtBqiAm&q=85&s=a076790886c62293f1674102a9946a9b" alt="Backend stack trace enhanced with source code context fetched from GitHub" width="2048" height="1622" data-path="images/tutorials/github-enhanced-stacktraces/enhancement.png" />
</Frame>

## How to get started

LaunchDarkly's backend error enhancement relies on GitHub. With your permission, we use the GitHub
repo linked to your code to fetch the correct file from GitHub. Then, using the line number of the
stack trace, we can rebuild the lost context of each file in the trace of the error.

It's simple, but it does require some configuration on your side. In most build processes, the file
names in the stack trace cannot be fetched directly from GitHub. Files tend to be copied from
directories and moved into other directories from deployment. In order to successfully enhance the
file, LaunchDarkly needs to know what these paths are. We try to make this easy by allowing you to test
your configuration directly on an error, providing you with immediate feedback (See below). Once you
are successful, just save and forget about it. Future errors will be enhanced!

<Frame caption="GitHub enhancement configuration form for mapping stack trace file paths to repository paths.">
  <img src="https://mintcdn.com/launchdarkly/AAfzx725JxtBqiAm/images/tutorials/github-enhanced-stacktraces/configuration-form.png?fit=max&auto=format&n=AAfzx725JxtBqiAm&q=85&s=a34b519d995f4abccb100335244c2965" alt="GitHub enhancement configuration form for mapping stack trace file paths to repository paths" width="1932" height="1612" data-path="images/tutorials/github-enhanced-stacktraces/configuration-form.png" />
</Frame>

For more detailed instructions to getting started, see [Enhancing Errors with GitHub](/docs/home/observability/errors)

## Diving deeper

Because your repo is rate limited by GitHub, we tried to minimize the amount of requests with a few
strategies. First, any files we fetch from GitHub are "cached" in S3, to avoid needing to refetch
the same file multiple times. This is cached with a Git Sha commit hash, so if your requested Git
Sha changes, the file will be re-fetched, ensuring the latest changes are displayed.

Which Git Sha does LaunchDarkly use? That depends. Ideally, the Git Sha will be provided to the LaunchDarkly
SDK, using the `serviceVersion` field. If you provide this field, you can ensure that you are looking
at the correct code that was running at the time of the error. However, this is not a blocker to using
the enhancement feature. If no version is provided to the SDK, LaunchDarkly will fetch the latest Git Sha
commit hash from your default branch. The hash is cached for a day, so there is a small chance you may
be viewing a stale version, but it will correct itself over time.

Lastly, this is only the start! We can already add context to compiled languages and link directly to
the file in GitHub. We are looking to surpass what we can enhance with source maps, and start
enhancing all your errors with GitHub. In the future, we are looking to use GitHub to see the
file change history, use git blames (sorry in advance to my fellow LaunchDarkly devs), and be able to
link the start of an error to a specific code commit. If you have any feedback on how the feature works
or future improvement, don't hesitate to reach out to us on [discord](https://launchdarkly.com/community).