flexi_logger

A flexible and easy-to-use logger that writes logs to stderr and/or to files, and/or to other output streams, and that can be influenced while the program is running.

Usage

Add flexi_logger and log to the dependencies section in your project's Cargo.toml (log is needed because flexi_logger plugs into the standard Rust logging facade given by the log crate, and you use the log macros to write log lines from your code):

[dependencies]
flexi_logger = "0.22"
log = "0.4"

To get the log simply written to stderr, add to an early place in your main

use flexi_logger::Logger;

Logger::try_with_str("info, my::critical::module=trace")?.start()?;

or, to get the log e.g. written with high performance to a file,

use flexi_logger::{FileSpec, Logger, WriteMode};

let _logger = Logger::try_with_str("info, my::critical::module=trace")?
    .log_to_file(FileSpec::default())
    .write_mode(WriteMode::BufferAndFlush)
    .start()?;

There are many configuration options to e.g.

• decide whether you want to write your logs to stdout or to a file,
• configure the path and the filenames of the log files,
• use file rotation,
• specify the line format for the log lines,
• apply a stateful filter before log lines are really written,
• define additional log streams, e.g for alert or security messages,
• support changing the log specification on the fly, while the program is running.

See

• the documentation of module code_examples for a bunch of examples,
• the API documentation for a complete reference.

Minimal rust version

The earliest supported rust version is currently "1.53.0".

Crate Features

Make use of the non-default features by specifying them in your Cargo.toml, e.g.

[dependencies]
flexi_logger = { version = "0.22", features = ["async", "specfile", "compress"] }
log = "0.4"

or, to get the smallest footprint (and no colors), switch off even the default features:

[dependencies]
flexi_logger = { version = "0.22", default_features = false }
log = "0.4"

async

Adds an additional write mode that decouples flexi_logger's I/O from your application threads. Works with log_to_stdout(), log_to_stderr(), and log_to_file(). See here for a performance comparison of some write modes.

Adds a dependency to crossbeam.

colors (default feature)

Getting colored output is also possible without this feature, by implementing and using your own coloring format function.

The default feature colors simplifies this by doing three things:

• it activates the optional dependency to ansi_term and
• provides additional colored pendants to the existing uncolored format functions
• it uses colored_default_format() for the output to stderr, and the non-colored default_format() for the output to files
• it activates the optional dependency to atty to being able to switch off coloring if the output is not sent to a terminal but e.g. piped to another program.

Colors, or styles in general, are a matter of taste, and no choice will fit every need. So you can override the default formatting and coloring in various ways.

With switching off the default features and choosing feature atty explicitly (see usage) you can remove the ansi_term-based coloring but keep the capability to switch off your own coloring.

compress

Adds two variants to the enum Logger::Cleanup, which allow keeping some or all rotated log files in compressed form (.gz) rather than as plain text files.

dont_minimize_extra_stacks

Normally, flexi_logger reduces the stack size of all threads that it might spawn (flusher, specfile-watcher, async writer, cleanup) to a bare minimum. For usecases where this is not desirable (see here for some motivation), you can activate this feature.

specfile

Adds a method Logger::start_with_specfile(specfile).

If started with this method, flexi_logger uses the log specification that was given to the factory method (one of Logger::with...()) as initial spec and then tries to read the log specification from the named file.

If the file does not exist, it is created and filled with the initial spec.

By editing the log specification in the file while the program is running, you can change the logging behavior in real-time.

The implementation of this feature uses some additional crates that you might not want to depend on with your program if you don't use this functionality. For that reason the feature is not active by default.

specfile_without_notification

Pretty much like specfile, except that updates to the file are being ignored. See here for more details.

syslog

Adds SyslogWriter, a LogWriter implementation that sends log entries to the syslog.

Not all variations of it are well tested. Feedback of all kinds is appreciated.

textfilter (default feature)

Adds the ability to filter logs by text, but also adds a dependency on the regex crate.

trc

An experimental feature that allows using flexi_logger functionality with tracing.

use_chrono_for_offset

The advisory RUSTSEC-2020-0159 hits both the chrono and the time crate. Since time is striving for a solution, while chrono appears to be unmaintained, flexi_logger switched from chrono to time. However, time's "strategy" to solve the advisory is overly puristic: it refuses to obtain the UTC offset on unix platforms, if the program is multi-threaded or running on a unix version other than linux.

flexi_logger tries to solve this dilemma by obtaining the UTC offset only once, during initialization, when most programs are still single-threaded. time should then be able to provide the correct offset on linux.

If this does not work, activate feature use_chrono_for_offset, which

• re-introduces the dependency to chrono
• uses chrono to determine the UTC offset
• makes your program again affected by RUSTSEC-2020-0159, which in many cases seems acceptable.

Note that this feature will be removed as soon as time allows obtaining the UTC offset again on all platforms.

Versions

See the change log for more details.