Ability to set log levels by output channel

[rudyflores]

I been working on an extensions that utilizes the OutputChannel API for logging things into the output view for different log levels such as: INFO, ERROR, etc...

Each of these loggers output independent information from each other, let's call this logger A and logger B. My feature request is the possibility to allow setting an individual log level at a per logger basis, so for example logger A could have a DEBUG level and logger B could have a TRACE level logging occur. This could be further enanced by using the set log level (as it works today) if the log level is not specified for that specific logger upon creation.

This is what I envision this API to look like:

// Case where log level is defined
const outputChannel = vscode.window.createOutputChannel('loggerA', { log: true }, 'DEBUG');

// Case where log level is not defined (will use default log level)
const outputChannel = vscode.window.createOutputChannel('loggerB', { log: true });

And even perhaps add a way to update this later with something like:

outputChannel.setLogLevel('TRACE');

For setting these log level a user can perhaps even use this enumerator from VS Code's docs: https://code.visualstudio.com/api/references/vscode-api#LogLevel

[vscodenpa]

This feature request is now a candidate for our backlog. The community has 60 days to upvote the issue. If it receives 20 upvotes we will move it to our backlog. If not, we will close it. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[rudyflores]

Adding some additional context here, I noticed the UI allows setting independent log levels through Developer: Set Log Level..., but is also the only way to achieve this. I would love for VS Code to add to it's API for OutputChannel to set this independent log level similar to how this UI allows it!

[vs-code-engineering]

🙂 This feature request received a sufficient number of community upvotes and we moved it to our backlog. To learn more about how we handle feature requests, please see our documentation.

Happy Coding!

[Splines]

I would love to see this as well for the following use case: in our VSCode extension we provide a command to start a "Logging session", i.e. start recording what they do with our extension. Once they've reproduced some behavior, users can then click in the status bar to close the session. The log file opens in their OS browser and then they can just drag and drop it into a GitHub issue.

The problem is that we want to set the log level when starting the session. Right now, I do a

await vscode.commands.executeCommand('workbench.action.setLogLevel');

But this means that we have to tell users what they have to do after using our command by means of a Readme or other documentation, e.g. "Then search for <your-extension-name> and click on Trace as debug level". And this is cumbersome.

[c3danielxu]

This is a great idea! I have a use case where I would like to create a log output channel with a different log level other than INFO (such as using a setting) and currently the workaround is to jump to the Output panel, display the output channel followed by changing the log using the command above with await vscode.commands.executeCommand('workbench.action.setLogLevel'); .

It would be great if we could specify the default log level as a parameter in createOutputChannel.

[remerle]

My workaround for now is to wrap the logger, and just log messages at info level but with [debug] prefixed (if the output channel is not set to Debug).

In my actual implementation, I have other factors driving whether to force logging messages at debug level.

Not pretty, but workaround rarely are 😉

    debugEnabled() {
        return Logger.channel.logLevel !== LogLevel.Off && Logger.channel.logLevel <= vscode.LogLevel.Debug;
    }

    debug(message: string, ...args: any[]) {
        if (this.debugEnabled()) {
            Logger.channel.debug(message, ...args);
        } else {
            Logger.channel.info(`[debug] ${message}`, ...args);
        }
    }

[rudyflores]

@sandy081 any updates on when this work will be started? Is there a way I could maybe even possibly work with you to contribute this myself?