RFC: DTrace probes for debugging or testing in userland programs

[Hiroki Sato]

Adrian Chadd <adrian.chadd at gmail.com> wrote
  in <CAJ-Vmoncp+qT97ipfn02S+Ax+Nkze8kX3E2=9Hf7dykZzz2X0w at mail.gmail.com>:

ad> On 19 December 2016 at 16:04, Jordan Hubbard <jkh at mail.turbofuzz.com> wrote:
ad> >
ad> > On Dec 19, 2016, at 12:27 PM, Adrian Chadd <adrian.chadd at gmail.com> wrote:
ad> >
ad> > So although I like the sentiment, I don't think using dtrace for
ad> > program logging is the right answer.  I like what apple did to wrap
ad> > the program logging stuff so people didn't just write their own
ad> > libraries (hi!) and so there's a unified-ish way to interact with
ad> > apple programs. I think we could do with that.
ad> >
ad> >
ad> > Thanks!
ad> >
ad> > We did a number of other things with ASL (Apple System Logger) which I miss
ad> > very much today and would hope to see in any FreeBSD equivalent:
ad> >
ad> > 1. We structured all log data into dictionaries, so every application and/or
ad> > subsystem within that application can add its own “tags” without squashing
ad> > other key information.  This also unified the character encoding format, so
ad> > some applications were no longer logging in ISO-Latin1, others in UTF-8 and
ad> > yet others in SHIFT-JIS.
ad> >
ad> > 2.  There’s also a logging database, as one of the many possible “output
ad> > sinks”, so searches / queries are fast (and there’s an API for querying and
ad> > managing its contents).
ad> >
ad> > 3. We added client-side and server side logging filters, so you can “crank
ad> > an application up” or shut its mouth without having to make any code
ad> > changes.
ad> >
ad> > 4. It’s all thread-safe.
ad>
ad> Hm. Where's the ASL source hiding? I'm kinda hoping it's light weight
ad> enough to port over without porting a lot of other stuff, but I am
ad> also afraid it's Apple.. :)

 libsystem_asl at https://opensource.apple.com/source/syslog/syslog-349.1.1/?

-- Hiroki
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