A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Kathleen Dollard — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 06:25:00 GMT

Very cool that you posted this. It's one of the biggest sleepers in 2005.

For anyone who's going to be at DevConnections next week, this is a large part of my Preparing Code for Easier Debugging talk. Or if you're in an INETA user group I can talk about why the new tracing approach changes everything (meaning, you'll actualy start using tracing techniques). I don't mean to sound like a commercial here, it's just that this aspect of 2005 is so very, very cool and almost no one has been talking about it.

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Joshua Flanagan — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:07:00 GMT

One thing I find lacking in the current (1.1) Trace listeners, and apparently the new listeners, is the ability to include a timestamp with every message. I always end up creating a static Utility class with this method:

public static void Trace(string message){
System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(DateTime.Now.ToString("s") +" "+ message);
}

I'm surprised this isn't a more commonly requested feature. Am I using Tracing incorrectly because I want time information?

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Mike Rousos — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 19:14:00 GMT

Joshua,
This is supported in Whidbey! I was waiting to introduce the trace output options property on listeners until my next post because this post was already pretty long, but you can specify options on a listener that will change what gets recorded. One of the options is timestamp. When this is selected, a timestamp will show up in every trace. The complete list of options are:
- Timestamp
- Date/Time
- Callstack
- Logical Operations Stack
- Process ID
- Thread ID

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Kevin Dente — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:33:00 GMT

Mike,
Thanks for the info - this is an area of Whidbey where documentation has been sorely lacking. Here's a couple of follow up questions:

1) Is there any way to specify the format in which trace messages are logged (if you're familiar with Log4Net, the equivalent is the Layout concept)?

2) Is trace configuration updated dynamically when the config file changes, without application restart? This is critically important for server applications.

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Mike Rousos [Msft] — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 20:41:00 GMT

Kevin,

Thanks for the questions.
1) Unfortunately, I'mnot familiar with Log4Net. There really isn't anyway to format the existing listners, though. The TextWriterTraceListener will always output things in this format - Source EvetnType: ID: Message OutputOptions.

That said, a user can implement their own custom listener and have complete control over the output. It's really a pretty easy exercise to do this. I'll be sure to post a blog entry about it sometime in the next week or two.

2) Changing a config file does not automatically update the tracing setup. However, there is a static method - Trace.Refresh() that will do this. It reloads the config file and updates the tracing setup. Two ways of using this would be to include a command an admin can call on the app to invoke this method or to use a File System Watcher to watch for changes to the config file (I've used this method before). Then, if the config file changes, we fire Trace.Refresh() so that we can update the tracing configuration without restarting the app.

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Kevin Dente — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 20:30:00 GMT

Mike,
Thanks for the answers. Trace.Refresh coupled with a FileSystemWatcher sounds like it would do the job quite nicely.

Bummer about trace formatting (I don't like how including some of that optional info like logical operation splits the log message into multiple lines, for example), but it sounds like it's possible to hack together a solution that might work.

Tips

David Boschmans' Weblog — Thu, 17 Mar 2005 22:16:00 GMT

Tips

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Tonci Korsano — Fri, 18 Mar 2005 00:15:00 GMT

Just great!!
I needed to understand the following:
<system.diagnostics>
<switches>
<add name="MySource" value="Verbose"/>
</switches>

<sources>
<source name="MySource">
<listeners>
<add name="examplelog" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener" initializeData="example.log"/>
<add name="allfile" type="System.Diagnostics.TextWriterTraceListener" initializeData="all.log" TraceOutputOptions="Timestamp, CorrelationId" />
</listeners>
</source>
</sources>

</system.diagnostics>

which obviously coms from an app.config file.
I am running this on Whidbey, and this program basically writes all activity of a game called Space Invaders :o)
Before this, I have logged info and errors in your typical Event Log.

Thank you again,

Tonchi.
"What you think doesn't matter. What matters is evidence!"

Tips

Ido Samuelson — Mon, 21 Mar 2005 19:37:00 GMT

Tips

re: A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]

Jaroslaw Kowalski — Wed, 30 Mar 2005 14:04:00 GMT

For an easy-to-use tracing tool visit the NLog page at http://nlog.sourceforge.net/

It has most of the features you expect from a logging tool (layouts, configurable log routing, high speed, log filtering, live configuration updates and many more) and it comes with full source code.

I'll be publishing some NLog-ging tips in my blog at http://blog.jkowalski.net/

Jarek

Logging and tracing

CallContext — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 02:00:33 GMT

I didn't know what I was missing until I got into log4net, and now I use it everywhere. I just feel naked without putting logging into classes. It's saved my life several times over.

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