github.com/CobaltFusion/DebugViewPP @1.72

Cobalt Fusion presents:

DebugView++

DebugView++ is primarily a viewer for Win32 OutputDebugString based logging in the style of Sysinternals DebugView. But can also be attached to virtually any other kind of logging, such as: - Android ADB (basically any console based standand output) - serial ports (using plink) - sockets, telnet or ssh ports (also using plink) - it can listen for UDP messages, handy in distributed systems See examples below.

Expected changes in next version 1.7.x (upcoming ~ Jan 1 2017): - bugfixes - last version with (official) XP support - internal refactoring from boost to C++11/14 constructs - no features planned, if you're missing something you need, file an issue!

Screenshot

Here is a list of current features:

• single selfcontaining executable, setup is provided but not required
• runs without prerequisites on WinXPSP3 (v1.5 and earlier also on WinXPSP2), Vista and 7/8.x
• after v1.7 we drop WindowsXP support if it becomes a problem to maintain
• capture both Win32 and Global Win32 messages
• tabbed views
• resolve PID to process name
• filter by process or message
• advanced filtering, exclude, track, stop, clear (optionally using regular expressions)
• line and token highlighting (create your own syntax highlighting)
• minimal delay of the traced application, compared to debugview a factor of 10 better.
• fast and responsive user-interface, even with +50.000 incoming lines per second
• SAIT (search-as-I-type) + token highlighting
• bookmarks
• statusbar shows detailed log/view/selection information
• open saved logs for post-mortum analysis
• memory compressed logbuffer using google snappy (-50% RAM consumed)
• commandline version
• tailing files (drag an ascii file into debugview to tail it)
• capture stdin piped messages, allows you to connect any kind of logging
• redesign of the monitoring code, more flexible and efficient, enable use of any collection as linebuffer
• add beep-filter for monitoring without seeing the screen (To hear it make sure a 'Default Beep' sound is defined in Control Panel->Sounds)
• clear Log now releases the message buffer instead of reusing the memory (might be useful when running debugview for a very long time)
• continuous logging to file commandline option (experimental)
• tailing our own logfiles over samba network (experimental)
• support for reading and tailing Sysinternals Debugview logfiles (the four most common formats)
• implemented tailing overwritten/skrinking logfiles

Added in 1.5:

• added console version (DebugViewConsole.exe) for use without UI
• several minor UI bugs fixed
• dbgview agent client mode allowing logging of kernel messages
• added socket listening, Log->Sources->Add can add TCP and UDP listeners, the protocol is sending raw newline terminated strings. Multiple lines can be send in one packet.
• better logging to files
• history (memory consumption) limits
• fixed troubles with tabs (highlighting/logfile/regex)
• timezone independent and human readable timestamps in the logfiles
• save filters after changing instead of only at exit
• moved filters out of sub-menu and add shortcut keys (try highlighting a word and pressing delete)
• add basic support for tailing unicode logfiles (unicode characters are truncated)
• fixed crash when saving files in UTC-n timezones

Not new features, but often overlooked, see below for details - View->Process Colors, easy way to give every process its own color! - Options->Link views, best effort to synchronize the line-selection over all views

Changes in 1.7.x so far: - restructuring log-sources code - experimental horizontal scrolling by dragging mouse - fixed a bug in version 1.6.48 that prevented dbgview-agent messages from showing - added name of tailing file in window title - fixed swallowing newlines - fixed DebugviewConsole (was broken in 1.6) - fixed all tests - fixed threading-issues

Download latest version (stable, dated 20 Sept 2015)

• DebugView v1.5.x Zipped executables
• DebugView v1.5.x Win32 installer

Experimental version (9 Dec 2016)

• DebugView v1.7.x Zipped executables
• DebugView v1.7.x Win32 installer

Older version

• DebugView v1.2 Zipped executables
• DebugView v1.2 Win32 installer

Screenshot demonstrating bookmarks and highlighting features.

Highlighted:

• regex (token filter): [^\s]*\\[\\\w+\.\s]+ filenames in blue
• regex (token filter): 0x\w+ hexadecimal numbers in red
• regex (highlight filter): Unittest lines with the word 'Unittest' have a lightgreen background
• a doubleclick on 'bytes' causes all instances of 'bytes' to highlight in yellow

See http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/regex/ECMAScript/ for all options for supported regular expressions

Android ADB example:

Screenshot demonstrating connecting to ADB logcat (Android Debug Bridge)

More examples

Connect any pipe:

To connect directly to a port or service, plink can be used, make sure an instance of debugview++ is already running before running this command:

plink -ssh -batch -v 192.168.0.1 2>&1 | debugview++

Notice that 2>&1 is used before the pipe (|) symbol to redirect stderr to stdout.

Connect to sysinternals dbgview agent for kernel messages:

Example: connect to sysinternals DbgView Agent, first start Dbgview.exe /a /k (/k for kernel messages) And connect DebugView++ using Log->Connect DebugView Agent. Note that 'Log->Connect DebugView Agent' assumes the agent is running on the same workstation as DebugView++ so it connects to 127.0.0.1. If you need to connect to a remote agent, use Log->Sources...->Add->DbgView Agent and fill in the ip-address.

Use RegexGroups + Token Highlighting:

Suppose you want to highlight some data value in your logging, since the actually value may differ, you cannot use normal matching to highlight them. With RegexGroups you can match text before or _after the actual token you want to highlight.

Example:

Filters:

Filters can be defined per view, for example choose File -> New View, and the filter dialog will popup. Pressing OK will open a new view without any filters.

Different types of filters:

All filters support regular expressions, if you are not familliar with regular expressions you can just type any word or part of a word to match.

• include: if an include filter is added only lines containing a matching expression will be included.
• exclude: lines containing a matching expression will be excluded from the view, excluding always takes precedence over including
• once: only the first line containing a matching expression will be included, this resets automatically at 'clear view'.
• highlight: lines containing a matching expression will be highlighted using the specified foreground and background colors
• token: only the matching expression will be highlighted using the specified foreground and background colors
• track: lines containing a matching expression will be focused and centered if possible. Note: auto scroll turns off if a track filter is matched
• stop: if a matching expression is found autoscroll is turned off, all track filters will be disabled and the line is focused. Note: stop filters work only if autoscroll is on, think of a stop-filter as a single-shot track filter
• beep: a standard windows beep (configurable in config panel->sounds) is played

Practical uses:

Include, exclude, once and highlight filters are the most intuitive filters to use. Track and stop can be a little confusing, let me try to give some examples.

track: use this filter to focus interesting lines that do not occur very often, but at a regular interval, for example, so you are monitoring a process that logs output every 30 seconds and you need to check the result.

stop: this filter is good when some special event occurs (an exception?) and you want to inspect the context of the event in the log before continuing. A press of the 'end' button will resume auto scrolling.

Other features:

link views: the selected line in the current view is located re-selected when you switch to another view. This is done on a best-effort bases, so if the exact line is not found, the nearest line is selected. In that case switching views will cause the currently selected line to change.

Consider this use case:

If you want to have auto scoll on, but some high frequeny messages are annoying you, but you cannot exclude them because they help you diagnose your event when it occurs, try this:

Use two views, one where the diagnostic messages are filtered and autoscroll is on, and one where the messages are included (and maybe highlighted), next turn on the 'link views' feature.

Now you can monitor the filtered view, and when your event occurs, select a line and switch to the unfiltered view, the same line is now highlighted, but in full unfiltered context.

process colors: If enabled each process (even processed with identical names) will get a its own background color automatically without adding any filters.

Other documentation:

Auto Scroll: scrolls down to new incoming lines automatically

Auto Scroll Stop: If enabled 'auto scroll' is turned on when the last line in the view is selected, and also turned off if any other line is selected.

Bookmarks: bookmarks are view specific and can be placed on a line by clicking left of the line number or Ctrl+F2, press F2 to move to the next bookmark. Bookmarks are temporary, so cannot be saved.

ClockTime: when enabled the time is displayed as provided by the system's real-time clock (RTC). Such a timestamp has a 16ms resolution on a typical desktop PC. When disabled, time is displayed as a relative time to the first message, however this timestamp is obtained from the High-Performance Counter (HPC) which typically has a sub-microsecond resolution.

The resolution should not be confused with accuracy here, the recorded timestamp is not the actual time the message occured, it is the time the message was received by DebugView++. Also there is no quarantee that the time between occurance and reception of messages is constant, however in practice this is pretty constant :)

How to build

This is a Visual Studio 2010 project with the following dependencies (download and install separately) - boost 1.63, https://sourceforge.net/projects/boost/files/boost/1.63.0.beta.1/boost_1_63_0_b1.zip - WTL 8.0, http://sourceforge.net/projects/wtl/, choose WTL80_sf.exe - zip.exe, http://gnuwin32.sourceforge.net/packages/zip.htm, choose [zip-3.0-setup.exe]

The libraries must be installed in /Libraries and zip.exe installed, add the binary directory to your path.

Build dependencies

• WiX Toolset: install the latest binary from http://wixtoolset.org/
• boost: see the install.sh in the boost archive
  • install visual studio 2015
  • open developer console (cmd.exe + run C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 14.0\Common7\Tools\vsvars32.bat)
  • unzip boost_1_63_0.zip to c:\downloads\boost_1_63_0
  • cd c:\downloads\boost_1_63_0
  • run c:\downloads\boost_1_63_0\bootstrap.bat (~1 minute)
  • b2.exe --build-type=complete stage install (~45 minutes)
  • find the results in c:\boost
  • copy C:\boost\include\boost-1_63\boost -> DebugViewpp\Libraries\boost\boost
  • copy C:\Boost\lib -> DebugViewPP\Libraries\Boost\lib\win32
  • for some reason I have to copy boost_1_63_0\stage\lib*. to \Libraries\boost\lib\win32*. to get the vc???-mt-sgd libraries.
  • "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Windows\v7.1\Bin\setenv.cmd" /Release /x64
  • b2.exe address-model=64 --build-type=complete stage install
  • copy C:\Boost\lib -> DebugViewPP\Libraries\Boost\lib\x64
• WTL and zip: decompress the archives and you're done (add zip.exe to the path)

-= Cobalt Fusion =-

Gert-Jan de Vos mailto:boosttestui@on.nl

Jan Wilmans mailto:janwilmans at gmail.com