Many backtraces include too much information that’s not relevant for the context. This makes it hard to find the signal in the backtrace and adds debugging time. With a BacktraceCleaner, you can setup filters and silencers for your particular context, so only the relevant lines are included.

If you need to reconfigure an existing BacktraceCleaner, like the one in Rails, to show as much as possible, you can always call BacktraceCleaner#remove_silencers!

Example: 

  bc = BacktraceCleaner.new
  bc.add_filter   { |line| line.gsub(Rails.root, '') }
  bc.add_silencer { |line| line =~ /mongrel|rubygems/ }
  bc.clean(exception.backtrace) # will strip the Rails.root prefix and skip any lines from mongrel or rubygems

Inspired by the Quiet Backtrace gem by Thoughtbot.

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March 31, 2009
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Reconfiguring the Rails cleaner

The Rails cleaner is available from the top-level Rails class:

Rails.backtrace_cleaner