Make it easy to open the Activitylog.xml and other logs

[madskristensen]

Logs to support:

• Activity log
• MEF error log
• Service Hub log
• VSIX Installer log

[yannduran]

Hi Mads,

Although my Time Savers extension already has commands to expose the Activity Log & the Diagnostic Log, I'd be prepared to write an open source single purpose extension to expose the logs listed above, and any other extensibility-related logs in the future.

I'd call the extension Extensibility Logs.

[madskristensen]

@yannduran, that would be amazing!!

[spottedmahn]

I imagine this would improve the UX when we get that pop-up that says "something failed in some extension, go find the activity log, good luck 😜" (paraphrased 😊).

[yannduran]

@spottedmahn Yes it will. There'll be a toolbar, similar to what Time Savers has now, with a button to click on that open the latest log(s).

[yannduran]

@madskristensen

The infrastucture for the extension + the bones of the documentation website page have been published to a GitHub repository called extensibility-logs.

The rudimentary documentation can be found here.

Both the GitHub repo and the documentation site can be considered placeholders for the moment. The solution will generate a VSIX file, but it has no package yet, therefore no functionality. I'll start on this next.

[yannduran]

@spottedmahn @madskristensen Extensibility Logs v1.0 has now been released to the marketplace.

Right now it has:

• Activity Log
• Diagnostic Log
• MEF Error Log
• Windows Path Variables

Coming next will be:

• VSIX InstallerLog
• Service Hub Log

Please let me know if you have any feedback (suggestions, new logs, bugs etc).

[spottedmahn]

Nice, thanks @yannduran 👏👏

Perhaps a screenshot in the extension marketplace desc? A picture is worth a 1,000 words 😊

[yannduran]

@spottedmahn Thanks for the feedback, and the screenshot image. I've been concentrating on getting the functionality to a point where I could get the extension to the marketplace. Expanding the documentation took second place.

But you're absolutely right, and it was on the backlog to do today. But I like your image much better than what I'd had in mind 👍

I can see by there only being two icons on your toolbar that I forgot to push out an update with the next two. I'll release that update today for sure. Then later I'll shoot out another update that has the VSIX Installer Log, plus the Service Hub Log if I can figure out what it's called and where it can be found.

Thanks again for the feedback!

[yannduran]

@madskristensen cc @spottedmahn Can I get some clarification on what's actually meant by "service hub log" please?

Is it the VsixServiceDiscovery-*.log's found in %temp%\servicehub\logs?

Also, I've decided I might remove the Path Variables command, and just leave it in Time Savers as I'm not sure it's really extensibility-related. What do you guys think?

[spottedmahn]

Expanding the documentation took second place.

Completely understand 😊

I've decided I might remove the Path Variables command

Feels right to me but I don't develop extensions so I'm probably not the best person to chime in on that

[madskristensen]

@dgriffen where can the Service Hub logs be found?

[ZoeyR]

@madskristensen %temp%\servicehub\logs but you will need to have the environment variable SERVICEHUBTRACELEVEL=all

[madskristensen]

@dgriffen, Ok, so only very few users will actually have a log file at that location then. @yannduran perhaps an idea would be to check if the file exist before opening it and if it doesn't, prompt the user to set the environment variable

[yannduran]

@madskristensen cc @dgriffen Thanks for the clarification.

I had already found that I had logs in that folder, and I hadn't specifically set the SERVICEHUBTRACELEVEL environment variable AFAIK.

Checking the state of my environment variables using the SET command, in both a normal Command Prompt and the Developer Command Prompt, that variable wasn't present. So maybe people will in fact have them by default after all.

That folder has several different types of logs in it, but I assume it's the VsixServiceDiscovery ones that we're interested in?

There are actually multiple VsixServiceDiscovery-*.log files in my folder, including multiple logs on the same day, with the same name plus a numeric suffix. I have to admit, that I wasn't even aware of these logs until I saw them in your list for this issue and went looking for ServiceHub logs.

For the moment, I'll grab the latest file with the largest suffix number and display that. If that doesn't work for whatever people want to look at the logs for, as an enhancement I can always provide a list and let them open the one they want. And of course if no logs are found, I could certainly prompt the user about the environment variable if that proves necessary.

[yannduran]

@madskristensen
@spottedmahn
cc @jcansdale

v1.2 has just been released

• added 'VSIX Installer Log'
• added 'View | Extensibility Logs'

[jcansdale]

@yannduran thanks for the ping.

Installed, I can see this being useful! 😄

It would be nice if it showed the current instance's folder somewhere. This is something I seem to need quite regularly. E.g. open the folder like this:
C:\Users<user>\AppData\Local\Microsoft\VisualStudio\16.0_aabc1737\

Or simply output it on the Path Variables dump for copy/pasting?

[yannduran]

Thanks @jcansdale! (I'd write Jamie, but I'm not sure if you'd be notified if I didn't add the @ handle)

I like your idea a lot, but it actually sounds like more of a perfect fit for Time Savers, rather than Extensibility Logs, because it's not really log-related (maybe I just named ET badly - I actually would have preferred Extensibility Essentials, but Mads had already used it lol).

Btw, you can add feature ideas, feedback etc on Extensibility Logs' GitHub repo. I opened a new issue for you for your suggestion. I've also added a new issue on Time Savers'GitHub repo as well.

Do you use Time Savers at all?

I'm happy to include your feature idea in ET if that's what extensibility developers would find handy though, for sure! I know I'll use it. And it means that I can get rid of the desktop shortcut that I currently use, lol.

What do you think @madskristensen> Extensibility Logs or Time Savers for Jamie

[yannduran]

@madskristensen

Can we close this issue now?

Extensibility Logs has all of the logs in the original list (plus more).

Any further requests can be added on the Extensibility Logs' GitHub repo.

[madskristensen]

I guess we can as soon as the extension has been added to https://github.com/madskristensen/ExtensibilityEssentials/blob/master/src/2019/extensions.vsext

[yannduran]

I've sent you a PR