[Logs] console.trace calls show up as errors

[lostintangent]

This is a pretty minor issue, but since error messages display the red icon, it would be great if users could visually scan their logs for issues, without seeing any false negatives.

Repro steps:

1. Add a call to console.trace into your app
2. Run the app to exercise the code that calls [ClientHttp] Error when selecting Web Services tab with large data sets #1
3. Open up the Glimpse client and select the respective request in the list
4. Select the Logs tab

Expected: To see the call to console.trace, displayed as an informational message
Actual: The trace call shows up, but it is labeled as an error.

[nikmd23]

@lostintangent, I'm a bit confused as to what the issue you're reporting is.

Is it that this message isn't actually an "Error" but it being reported as such?

[lostintangent]

That screenshot is showing the result of me calling console.trace within an app. The message is the stack that was generated as a result, but Glimpse seems to be categorizing the log as an error, which it isn't. Apologies for the ambiguity, I just added repro steps to the bug to hopefully make this clearer.

[nikmd23]

Oh! I see, okay. Thanks for the clarification.

[mike-kaufman]

See https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/master/lib/console.js#L82_L90. Console.trace(...) writes output to through Console.error(...). IIRC, we're not proxying trace.

[nikmd23]

Okay, it looks like the issue here is a difference in the implementation of the/a spec.

The DevTools Working Group says that trace is "equivalent to console.log except that it also adds stack trace from the point where the method was called". This is in line with @lostintangent's expectation. However, Node's documentation states that calls to .trace should be written to stderr. (That's true for both 4.5 LTS and 6.6.)

I do find Node's implementation to be a bit funny, but we should probably stick to their definition until we have a bit more user feedback.

That said, calls to console.trace() in the browser should have the behavior that @lostintangent described. We need to test to make sure this is the case. @newtonjain, please make sure this case is covered in your related work.

[mike-kaufman]

We can fairly easily proxy trace for node such that it still writes to stderr, but the glimpse message has an info or a warning. This is a small, low-risk change.

[nikmd23]

I like @mike-kaufman's suggestion, and think that we should make sure the Glimpse message has an Info Debug tag on it.

[nikmd23]

console.trace() calls from Node are still showing up as Errors. They should be marked as Debug.

[mike-kaufman]

Addressed with PR https://github.com/Glimpse/Glimpse.Node/pull/633.

[nikmd23]

👌

I did find a related issue while testing this (https://github.com/Glimpse/Glimpse.Browser.Agent/issues/86), but this looks good.

[nikmd23]

This is now available in Glimpse for Node 0.15.2. Please see our announcement issue for more information.