dg3feiko / go-debug

Conditional debug logging for Golang libraries & applications

go-debug

Conditional debug logging for Go libraries.

View the docs.

Installation

$ go get github.com/tj/go-debug

Example

package main

import . "github.com/tj/go-debug"
import "time"

var debug = Debug("single")

func main() {
  for {
    debug("sending mail")
    debug("send email to %s", "[e-mail]")
    debug("send email to %s", "[e-mail]")
    debug("send email to %s", "[e-mail]")
    time.Sleep(500 * time.Millisecond)
  }
}

If you run the program with the DEBUG=* environment variable you will see:

15:58:15.115 34us   33us   single - sending mail
15:58:15.116 3us    3us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:15.116 1us    1us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:15.116 1us    1us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:15.620 504ms  504ms  single - sending mail
15:58:15.620 6us    6us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:15.620 4us    4us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:15.620 4us    4us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:16.123 503ms  503ms  single - sending mail
15:58:16.123 7us    7us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:16.123 4us    4us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:16.123 4us    4us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:16.625 501ms  501ms  single - sending mail
15:58:16.625 4us    4us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:16.625 4us    4us    single - send email to [e-mail]
15:58:16.625 5us    5us    single - send email to [e-mail]

A timestamp and two deltas are displayed. The timestamp consists of hour, minute, second and microseconds. The left-most delta is relative to the previous debug call of any name, followed by a delta specific to that debug function. These may be useful to identify timing issues and potential bottlenecks.

The DEBUG environment variable

Executables often support --verbose flags for conditional logging, however libraries typically either require altering your code to enable logging, or simply omit logging all together. go-debug allows conditional logging to be enabled via the DEBUG environment variable, where one or more patterns may be specified.

For example suppose your application has several models and you want to output logs for users only, you might use DEBUG=models:user. In contrast if you wanted to see what all database activity was you might use DEBUG=models:*, or if you're love being swamped with logs: DEBUG=*. You may also specify a list of names delimited by a comma, for example DEBUG=mongo,redis:*.

The name given should be the package name, however you can use whatever you like.

License

MIT