Here's how it looks if you hide the tree - note the search results are at the bottom. If you're not searching, that search area is hidden as well.
Because it's parsing the log, you can filter on logger, level, the message - any field resolved during parsing. The annotated lines show up as green by default. The UI supports multiple tabs (log sources) and will live tail for you as well. Note the search results show up as blue in the log panel, and the gutter on the right displays the individual line colors (black is a search match). On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 8:46 PM Scott Deboy <scott.de...@gmail.com> wrote: > Your screenshot didn't come through. > > My mental model is usually: > > * Hide logs from packages you know aren't relevant - the tree-based > (package-level) filtering and focus-on actions in the tree are super > helpful for doing that quickly > * Once you've filtered the view down to the set of packages that may be > relevant, hide logs that are getting in the way - via the 'always hide' > expression box, available at the bottom of the tree view > * Use filter expressions to further narrow results > * Annotate those filtered results (the 'marker' column is editable) > * Clear the filter and search the remaining results, annotating if needed > * Optionally save off the logs and share with other devs (they can import > your filtered logs) > > All of this and a lot more is possible with the existing set of features. > > UI-wise I agree, less is more most of the time. You don't need to parse > the logs, you can put the entire log line in the 'msg' field, but that > prevents you from using some expression support facilitated by the parsing, > such as "level > INFO" or "exception exists". > > On Mon, Sep 25, 2023 at 7:28 PM Robert Middleton <rmiddle...@apache.org> > wrote: > >> I do know that there are a bunch of settings to hide things that aren't >> useful, I'm just saying that even hiding things I still don't find it super >> useful. The table view that exists is theoretically useful, but I find >> that it likes to cut off information because it is, well, a table. >> >> The VfsLogFilePatternReceiver I have never gotten to work properly. I >> think it's good and needed, but it definitely needs a user-friendly way of >> selecting a log file and viewing a live example of how it will parse the >> log file. Although for my purposes, we don't actually write to a log file, >> so it's a bit of a moot point. >> >> The next question of course is what do I feel would be better? I spent >> some time working on that tonight as a proof of concept, and here's what I >> came up with(with chainsaw in the background for reference): >> [image: Screenshot from 2023-09-25 22-12-07.png] >> >> Note: this picture is from my VM, so it's definitely squashed since it >> was running at a weird resolution so I could take the screenshot. But this >> shows a good point: in this screenshot, only about 60% of the UI is >> actually used to view logs. From the top there's the GNOME title bar, >> title bar, file menu bar, toolbar, tabs, search bar, column headers, and >> then we finally get to what chainsaw is supposed to do - display logs. >> >> What I've done is intentionally a proof of concept at the moment, but it >> provides a much simpler view. Think of it like viewing logs on the >> terminal, but adding in the capability to do more advanced operations(e.g. >> what chainsaw does with the right-click context menu). The GUI is at the >> moment just a JTextPane instead of a table, so that fields do not get cut >> off(like they currently do in the table) and it can better scroll like a >> real terminal when new messages come in. Right-clicking will open up a >> pop-up menu contextually depending on what it is you have clicked on(the >> time, logger name, level, or the message). >> >> Anyway, that's what I personally feel would be more useful, but I would >> love to hear some other ideas. >> >> -Robert Middleton >> >> On Sat, Sep 23, 2023 at 11:35 PM Scott Deboy <scott.de...@gmail.com> >> wrote: >> >>> Please review the various display setting controls. Most of what you >>> mention can be toggled from visible to hidden. >>> >>> VfsLogFilePatternReceiver does exactly what you're describing. Allowing >>> live remote tailing of logs over an ssh accessible path. >>> >>> You control if these logs end up in separate tabs or the same tab via the >>> routing expression in preferences. >>> >>> We should slack sometime so I can go over the main features and what was >>> nuked in the log4j1 removal path and what of those are worth restoring. >>> >>> Scott >>> >>> On Sat, Sep 23, 2023, 6:08 PM Robert Middleton <rmiddle...@apache.org> >>> wrote: >>> >>> > Since Scott has said that he would help with maintenance and Rob T has >>> also >>> > indicated that he would perhaps help, this is my view of the current >>> status >>> > of Chainsaw and what I feel its current deficiencies are. >>> > >>> > Current status: Master builds and mostly works. The last thing that I >>> had >>> > been working on was updating the config files in order to remove >>> xstream >>> > and better standardize on using commons configuration. I think some >>> of the >>> > configuration settings don't save/load correctly, but some do. All of >>> > log4j1 has been removed. Certain features have been removed too that >>> were >>> > largely dependent on log4j1. >>> > >>> > What I feel would be useful for Chainsaw: For me, I do a lot of >>> embedded >>> > work. Most of the log files that we have at my current job just go to >>> > syslog on our device(syslog is provided by busybox). So viewing logs >>> is a >>> > matter of SSHing into the system and just reading from the buffer. >>> Having >>> > a utility running on a separate computer that lets me see the >>> > logs(especially if it can connect automatically to a device) could be >>> very >>> > useful. Specific potential use-case: at my last job, I wrote a quick >>> log >>> > viewing utility that would correlate log messages between two separate >>> > devices. This was needed because one device was embedded that logged >>> out >>> > the serial port, the other was Linux and would log over the network, >>> but >>> > neither had reliable time. >>> > >>> > Current limitations that I find with Chainsaw: The current GUI is not >>> very >>> > useful. A large portion of the screen is taken up by toolbars/context >>> > information that I generally don't find useful. I think most of the >>> > features that are in the GUI are very useful(for example, being able to >>> > trace messages and add matches) but is limited by the fact that I only >>> see >>> > a small portion of the context at a time. In my mind, an ideal >>> solution >>> > would be to get rid of the toolbars as much as possible and to focus >>> more >>> > on the log messages like you would see in a terminal, but still having >>> the >>> > capability to right-click on a message/message components and >>> investigate >>> > individual messages or flag them appropriately. >>> > >>> > Perhaps the best way to organize this would be to have a logical split >>> in >>> > the code: the backend(which receives and routes log messages) and the >>> > front-end portion. The front-end could be something like Swing for a >>> GUI, >>> > or some sort of command-line interface like ncurses. >>> > >>> > Thoughts? What is something that people want to see/think could be >>> > useful/would want to try and code up? >>> > >>> > -Robert Middleton >>> > >>> >>
