Enabling logging

When reporting a Metalama bug, attaching Metalama log files is helpful. This article shows how to generate these logs.

You can produce log files or write the logging output to the console.

Producing log files

Step 1. Install the Metalama CLI tool

Install the metalama .NET tool as described in Installing the Metalama command line tool.

Step 2. Edit diagnostics.json

Run the following command:

metalama config edit diagnostics

This command opens a diagnostics.json file in your default editor. Make these changes:

1. In the logging/processes section, set the processes that should have logging enabled to true:
   • Compiler: The compile-time process.
   • Rider: The design-time Roslyn process of the Rider IDE.
   • DevEnv: The UI process of Visual Studio. No aspect code runs in this process.
   • RoslynCodeAnalysisService: The design-time Roslyn process running under Visual Studio, where aspect code runs.
2. In the logging/trace section, set the categories that should have logging enabled to true. To enable logging for all categories, set the * category to true.

This example shows how to enable logging for the compiler process for all categories.

{
    "logging": {
        "processes": {
                "Other": false,
                "Compiler": true,
                "DevEnv": false,
                "RoslynCodeAnalysisService": false,
                "Rider": false,
                "BackstageWorker": false,
                "MetalamaConfig": false,
                "TestHost": false
      },
    "trace": {
        "*": false
      },
    "stopLoggingAfterHours": 5.0
  }
}

To validate the correctness of the JSON file, run the following command:

metalama config validate diagnostics

Step 3. Restart processes

Diagnostic settings are cached in all processes, including background compiler processes and IDE helper processes.

To restart background compiler processes, run the following command:

metalama kill

To alter the logging configuration of the IDE processes, manually restart your IDE.

Step 4. Execute Metalama

Perform the actions you want to log.

Step 5. Open the log file

Find the log in the %TEMP%\Metalama\Logs directory.