However, even if you’re not working with a separate logging tool or don’t require debug output from processes that run with different credentials, you’ll probably have encountered our good old friend Debwin3. It’s been around for some fifteen years now and serves to capture debug output, save logs to file, clipboard etc. While it does its job well enough, there have always been restrictions that bugged us internally as well:
- No capturing of debug messages from services or web applications (generally processes that run with different credentials)
- No searching
- No filtering
- No highlighting – at least, not documented 😉
- Sloooowing down the process that’s being debugged
- No multi document support for comparisons
We looked at the market for UDP listeners and were unable to find a logging application that satisfied our needs – xcopy installation, no additional requirements like JAVA, easy to use even for end users. Thus, we decided to write a new application from scratch – Debwin4.
It has all the features we were missing – easy filtering by timestamp, thread, search text. We’ve introduced severity levels for the debug output in LL22 as well which allows you to quickly limit the output just to warnings and errors. And it’s fast. Seriously fast. Check out the following animation which shows the designer preview being logged in real time. A whopping 10.000 lines of debug output are created and there is almost no lag introduced, a huge progress compared to the old technique:
Besides, you can also open and analyze existing log files. We made sure that even huge files should work flawlessly and fast.
Leading the development at combit as Managing Director. Microsoft .NET enthusiast driving innovation & agile project management. Used to be a physicist in my first life. I love hiking and vanlife.
