[systemd-devel] [PATCH] journalctl: allow customizable output formats

[Kashyap Chamarthy]

[Strangely, this thread up in my inbox rather than my systemd Maildir.]

On Mon, Sep 22, 2014 at 12:43:28PM -0400, Daurnimator wrote:
> On 22 September 2014 11:33, Daniel P. Berrange <berrange at redhat.com> wrote:
> 
> > The current '--output FORMAT' argument defines a number of
> > common output formats, but there are some useful cases it
> > does cover. In particular when reading application logs it
> > is often desirable to display the code file name, line number
> > and function name. Rather than defining yet more fixed output
> > formats, this patch introduces user defined output formats.
> >
> > The format string is an arbitrary string which contains a
> > mixture of literal text and variable subsistitions. Each
> > variable name corresponds to a journal field name. A variable
> > name can be optionally followed by a data type, and in the
> > case of string types, a length limit.
> >
> 
> As an opposing point of view, I've been accomplishing this by piping
> output through a script that parses and displays JSON.  I rather this
> style of composability than passing format strings to journalctl
> itself.

FWIW, as a heavy user and frequent tester of libvirt, I'd absolutely
welcome the proposed change which clearly illustrated what I wished for
(code file, line, function name & the error string) at times when
debugging myself or helping others debug. When at a critical time, I'd
rather much depend on `journalctl` having such a useful option handy
than depending on yet another random script from the inter-webs.

--
/kashyap