Install Vaka in a Rust application

Project: your-project · Endpoint: https://vaka.example.com · Ingest key: vk_your_ingest_key

These steps are written to be followed by a coding agent. Do them in order and verify at the end.

1. Add the dependency

[dependencies]
vaka-sdk = { git = "https://github.com/ErikHellman/vaka", features = ["tracing"] }

Drop features = ["tracing"] if the app does not use the tracing crate.

2. Initialise at the top of main

fn main() {
    let _vaka = vaka_sdk::init(vaka_sdk::Config {
        key: "vk_your_ingest_key".into(),
        endpoint: "https://vaka.example.com".into(),
        release: Some(env!("CARGO_PKG_VERSION").into()),
        ..Default::default()
    });
    // ... the rest of the program. Keep `_vaka` alive until exit:
    // dropping it ends the session and flushes pending data.
}

Config::default() reads VAKA_KEY, VAKA_ENDPOINT, VAKA_RELEASE and VAKA_ENVIRONMENT, so keys can come from the environment instead of source code. With an empty key the SDK is a no-op.

For #[tokio::main] apps, call init first thing inside main; the SDK uses its own thread and does not need a runtime.

3. What you get automatically

• Panics, with a crash-site-first backtrace, sent synchronously before the process unwinds or aborts.
• A session per process run: exited on clean shutdown, crashed after a panic, so crash-free rates per release work.

4. Report errors and events

if let Err(e) = do_work() {
    vaka_sdk::capture_error(&e);      // includes the `source()` chain
}
vaka_sdk::capture_message("cache rebuilt", vaka_sdk::Level::Info);
vaka_sdk::add_breadcrumb("db", "connected", vaka_sdk::Level::Info);
vaka_sdk::set_tag("region", "eu-north-1");
vaka_sdk::track("job_finished", &[("kind", "import")]);
vaka_sdk::identify(Some("user-123"));  // opt-in only

With the tracing feature, add the layer so info!/warn! become breadcrumbs and error! events become Vaka errors:

use tracing_subscriber::prelude::*;
tracing_subscriber::registry()
    .with(tracing_subscriber::fmt::layer())
    .with(vaka_sdk::tracing_layer::VakaLayer::default())
    .init();

5. Symbols for release builds

Backtraces are symbolicated in-process when the binary has symbols (the default for cargo build --release unless you set strip = true). If you strip release binaries, keep debug info and upload it with the vaka CLI after each build:

[profile.release]
debug = "line-tables-only"
split-debuginfo = "packed"   # optional

export VAKA_URL=https://vaka.example.com VAKA_TOKEN=vt_... VAKA_PROJECT=your-project
vaka upload debug-files target/release/myapp

6. Verify

VAKA_URL=https://vaka.example.com VAKA_KEY=vk_your_ingest_key vaka send-test-event

Then call vaka_sdk::capture_message("vaka install test", vaka_sdk::Level::Info) from the app and check vaka issues -p your-project (or the MCP tool list_issues). Events appear within a few seconds. Set debug: true in Config to log what the SDK sends.