tracing

Application-level tracing for Rust.

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Overview

tracing is a framework for instrumenting Rust programs to collect structured, event-based diagnostic information.

In asynchronous systems like Tokio, interpreting traditional log messages can often be quite challenging. Since individual tasks are multiplexed on the same thread, associated events and log lines are intermixed making it difficult to trace the logic flow. tracing expands upon logging-style diagnostics by allowing libraries and applications to record structured events with additional information about temporality and causality — unlike a log message, a span in tracing has a beginning and end time, may be entered and exited by the flow of execution, and may exist within a nested tree of similar spans. In addition, tracing spans are structured, with the ability to record typed data as well as textual messages.

The tracing crate provides the APIs necessary for instrumenting libraries and applications to emit trace data.

Compiler support: requires rustc 1.39+

Usage

(The examples below are borrowed from the log crate's yak-shaving example, modified to idiomatic tracing.)

In Applications

In order to record trace events, executables have to use a Subscriber implementation compatible with tracing. A Subscriber implements a way of collecting trace data, such as by logging it to standard output. tracing_subscriber's fmt module provides reasonable defaults. Additionally, tracing-subscriber is able to consume messages emitted by log-instrumented libraries and modules.

The simplest way to use a subscriber is to call the set_global_default function.

use tracing::{info, Level};
use tracing_subscriber::FmtSubscriber;

fn main() {
    // a builder for `FmtSubscriber`.
    let subscriber = FmtSubscriber::builder()
        // all spans/events with a level higher than TRACE (e.g, debug, info, warn, etc.)
        // will be written to stdout.
        .with_max_level(Level::TRACE)
        // completes the builder.
        .finish();

    tracing::subscriber::set_global_default(subscriber)
        .expect("setting defualt subscriber failed");

    let number_of_yaks = 3;
    // this creates a new event, outside of any spans.
    info!(number_of_yaks, "preparing to shave yaks");

    let number_shaved = yak_shave::shave_all(number_of_yaks);
    info!(
        all_yaks_shaved = number_shaved == number_of_yaks,
        "yak shaving completed."
    );
}

[dependencies]
tracing = "0.1"
tracing-subscriber = "0.2.0-alpha.4"

This subscriber will be used as the default in all threads for the remainder of the duration of the program, similar to how loggers work in the log crate.

In addition, you can locally override the default subscriber. For example:

use tracing::{info, Level};
use tracing_subscruber::FmtSubscriber;

fn main() {
    let subscriber = tracing_subscriber::FmtSubscriber::builder()
        // all spans/events with a level higher than TRACE (e.g, debug, info, warn, etc.)
        // will be written to stdout.
        .with_max_level(Level::TRACE)
        // builds the subscriber.
        .finish();

    tracing::subscriber::with_default(subscriber, || {
        info!("This will be logged to stdout");
    });
    info!("This will _not_ be logged to stdout");
}

This approach allows trace data to be collected by multiple subscribers within different contexts in the program. Note that the override only applies to the currently executing thread; other threads will not see the change from with_default.

Any trace events generated outside the context of a subscriber will not be collected.

Once a subscriber has been set, instrumentation points may be added to the executable using the tracing crate's macros.

In Libraries

Libraries should only rely on the tracing crate and use the provided macros and types to collect whatever information might be useful to downstream consumers.

use std::{error::Error, io};
use tracing::{debug, error, info, span, warn, Level};

// the `#[tracing::instrument]` attribute creates and enters a span
// every time the instrumented function is called. The span is named after the
// the function or method. Paramaters passed to the function are recorded as fields.
#[tracing::instrument]
pub fn shave(yak: usize) -> Result<(), Box<dyn Error + 'static>> {
    // this creates an event at the DEBUG level with two fields:
    // - `excitement`, with the key "excitement" and the value "yay!"
    // - `message`, with the key "message" and the value "hello! I'm gonna shave a yak."
    //
    // unlike other fields, `message`'s shorthand initialization is just the string itself.
    debug!(excitement = "yay!", "hello! I'm gonna shave a yak.");
    if yak == 3 {
        warn!("could not locate yak!");
        // note that this is intended to demonstrate `tracing`'s features, not idiomatic
        // error handling! in a library or application, you should consider returning
        // a dedicated `YakError`. libraries like snafu or thiserror make this easy.
        return Err(io::Error::new(io::ErrorKind::Other, "shaving yak failed!").into());
    } else {
        debug!("yak shaved successfully");
    }
    Ok(())
}

pub fn shave_all(yaks: usize) -> usize {
    // Constructs a new span named "shaving_yaks" at the TRACE level,
    // and a field whose key is "yaks". This is equivalent to writing:
    //
    // let span = span!(Level::TRACE, "shaving_yaks", yaks = yaks);
    //
    // local variables (`yaks`) can be used as field values
    // without an assignment, similar to struct initializers.
    let span = span!(Level::TRACE, "shaving_yaks", yaks);
    let _enter = span.enter();

    info!