path: root/support/texlogsieve/texlogsieve.tex

% texlogsieve - filter and summarize LaTeX log files
%
% Copyright (C) 2021, 2022 Nelson Lago <lago@ime.usp.br>
%
% This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
% it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
% the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
% (at your option) any later version.
%
% This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
% but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
% MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
% GNU General Public License for more details.
%
% You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
% along with this program.  If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
%
% Code etc: https://gitlab.com/lago/texlogsieve

\documentclass{ltxdoc}

\usepackage[hyperref,svgnames,x11names,table]{xcolor}
\usepackage{url}
\urlstyle{sf}
\usepackage{hyperref}
\hypersetup{
  colorlinks=true,
  citecolor=DarkGreen,
  linkcolor=NavyBlue,
  urlcolor=DarkRed,
  filecolor=green,
  anchorcolor=black,
}

\usepackage{libertinus}
\usepackage[scale=.85]{sourcecodepro}

\RecordChanges

\changes{v1.0.0-beta-1}{2021/12/16}{First public prerelease}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Automatically read \texttt{texlogsieverc}
                                    if it exists}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Add options \texttt{-\/-be-redundant}
                                    and \texttt{-\/-box-detail}}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Add options
                                    \texttt{-\/-set-to-level-[levelname]}}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Include silenced messages in summaries}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Substitute empty citation/label keys
                                    for ``???''}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Fix bug that prevented
                                    \texttt{-\/-add-[info\textbar
                                    warning]-message} from working}
\changes{v1.0.0-beta-2}{2022/01/04}{Misc small bugfixes}

\begin{document}

\title{\textsf{texlogsieve}:\thanks{This document
corresponds to \textsf{texlogsieve}~1.0.0-beta-2,
dated~2022-01-04.}\\[.3\baselineskip]
{\normalsize(yet another program to)\\[-.6\baselineskip]}
{\large filter and summarize \LaTeX\ log files}
}

\author{
Nelson Lago\\
\texttt{lago@ime.usp.br}\\
~\\
\url{https://gitlab.com/lago/texlogsieve}
}

\maketitle

\begin{abstract}

\texttt{texlogsieve} reads a \LaTeX\ log file (or the standard input if
no file is specified), filters out less relevant messages, and displays
a summary report. Highlights:

\begin{itemize}
  \item Two reports: the most important messages from the log file
        followed by a summary of repeated messages, undefined
        references etc.;
  \item The program goes to great lengths to correctly handle \TeX\ line
        wrapping and does a much better job at that than existing tools;
  \item Multiline messages are treated as a single entity;
  \item Several options to control which messages should be filtered out;
  \item No messages are accidentally removed;
  \item The summary report is currently simple, but useful.
\end{itemize}

\end{abstract}

\section{Introduction}

The \LaTeX\ log file is very verbose, which is useful when debugging but
a hindrance during document preparation, as warnings such as ``missing
character'', ``undefined reference'', and others become buried among lots
of less relevant messages. This program filters out such less relevant
messages and outputs the rest, together with a final summary for the
specially important ones. It is a \texttt{texlua} script, similar in
spirit to tools such as \texttt{texfot}, \texttt{texloganalyser},
\texttt{rubber-info}, \texttt{textlog\_extract}, \texttt{texlogparser},
and others.

Note that it does not try to do anything smart about error messages
(at least for now); if there is an error, you probably want to take a
look directly at the log file anyway. It also cannot detect if \LaTeX{}
stops for user input, so you should \textbf{really} run \LaTeX\ in
\texttt{nonstopmode} when \texttt{texlogsieve} is reading from a pipe.

\texttt{texlogsieve} \textbf{must} be run from the same directory as
\verb/[pdf|lua|xe]latex/, because it searches for the files used during
compilation (packages loaded from the current directory, files included
with \verb|\input| etc.).

\pagebreak[1]
The defaults are reasonable; hopefully, you can just do

\begin{list}{}{}
    \small\item
    \verb/[pdf|lua|xe]latex -interaction nonstopmode myfile.tex | texlogsieve/
    \par
    {\normalsize or\par}
    \verb|texlogsieve myfile.log|
\end{list}

\noindent and be satisfied with the result.

Since it needs to know what messages to expect, \texttt{texlogsieve} is
currently geared towards \LaTeX; I have no idea how it would work with
Con\TeX{}t or plain \TeX. Still, adding support to them should not be
too difficult.

If you want to know more about the \TeX\ log file and the workings of the
program, check the initial comments in the code.

\section{Unwrapping Long Lines}

\TeX\ wraps (breaks) lines longer than \texttt{max\_print\_line} (by
default, 79 characters). Most tools detect lines that are exactly 79
characters long and treat the next line as a continuation, but that fails
in quite a few cases (check the comments in the \texttt{texlogsieve} code
for a discussion on that). So, if at all possible, it is a very good idea
to set \texttt{max\_print\_line} to a really large value (such as 100,000),
effectively disabling line wrapping. It was useful in the 1980s, but not
anymore (your terminal or editor wraps automatically).

Still, \texttt{texlogsieve} goes to great lengths to correctly handle
\TeX{} line wrapping and does a pretty good job at that. It understands
the \texttt{max\_print\_line} \TeX{} configuration variable and reads its
value from the same places as \TeX. Setting \texttt{max\_print\_line} to
a value larger than 9999 makes \texttt{texlogsieve} ignore line wrapping.

\section{Unrecognized Messages}
\label{unrecognized}

\texttt{texlogsieve} automatically handles messages such as ``Package blah
Info:\dots'' or ``LaTeX Warning:\dots''. However, many  messages do not
follow this pattern. To do its thing, \texttt{texlogsieve} should know about
these other messages beforehand. This is important for three reasons:

\begin{enumerate}
  \item Unknown messages are given maximum priority; if you do not want to
        see them, you have to use \texttt{-\/-silence-string};
  \item If the message has more than one line, each line is treated as an
        independent message. This means you need to use
        \texttt{-\/-silence-string} multiple times;
  \item In some rare cases, an unrecognized message may make
        \texttt{texlogsieve} misclassify nearby wrapped lines (if it comes
        right after a 79 characters long line of a specific type), close
        file messages (if it includes an unmatched close parens character),
        or shipout messages (if it includes an unmatched close square bracket
        character or an open square bracket character followed only by
        numbers).
\end{enumerate}

While \texttt{texlogsieve} recognizes quite a few messages out of the box,
you may run into a message generated by some package that it does not know
about (you can check for this using \texttt{-l unknown}). If that is the
case, you can use the \verb/--add-[debug|info|warning|critical]-message/
options to add it to the list of messages known to the program.

\section{Configuration File}

\texttt{texlogsieve} always searches automatically for the (optional)
\texttt{texlogsieverc} configuration file in the \TeX\ path (i.e., it
searches using \texttt{Kpathsea}). In the default configuration, the
current directory is in the search path, so adding a config file with that
name to the project directory is enough to make it work. Options in the
config file are exactly the same as the long command-line options described
below, but without the preceding ``\texttt{-\/-}'' characters. Lines
starting with a ``\#'' sign are comments. An example configuration file:

\begin{quote}
\begin{verbatim}
no-page-delay
# no-page-delay enables shipouts, but we do not want that
no-shipouts
silence-string = Hyperreferences in rotated content will be misplaced
# no need to escape the "\" (or any other) character
silence-string = Using \overbracket and \underbracket from `mathtools'
# silence a string using lua pattern matching
silence-string = ////luaotfload | aux : font no %d+ %(.-%)
silence-files = *.sty
\end{verbatim}
\end{quote}

\section{Options}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-page-delay}, \texttt{-\/-no-page-delay}]~\\
Enable/disable grouping messages by page before display. When enabled, messages
are only output after the current page is finished (shipout). The advantage is
that the page number is included in the message (default enabled).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-summary}, \texttt{-\/-no-summary}]~\\
Enable/disable final summary (default enabled).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-only-summary}]~\\
No messages, show only the final summary (default disabled).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-shipouts}, \texttt{-\/-no-shipouts}]~\\
Enable/disable reporting shipouts (default disabled with page-delay, enabled
with no-page-delay).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-repetitions}, \texttt{-\/-no-repetitions}]~\\
Allow/prevent repeated messages (default disabled, i.e., repeated messages
are supressed).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-be-redundant}, \texttt{-\/-no-be-redundant}]~\\
Present/suppress ordinary messages that will also appear in the summary.
This affects messages that have special summaries (such as under/overfull
boxes or undefined citations). With \texttt{-\/-no-be-redundant} (the
default), these messages are filtered out and only appear in the final
summary.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-box-detail}, \texttt{-\/-no-box-detail}]~\\
Include/exclude detailed information on under/overfull boxes in the final
summary. With \texttt{-\/-no-box-detail}, the summary presents only a list
of pages and files that had under/overfull boxes (default enabled).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-heartbeat}, \texttt{-\/-no-heartbeat}]~\\
Enable/disable progress gauge in page-delay mode (default enabled).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-l LEVEL}, \texttt{-\/-minlevel=LEVEL}]~\\
Filter out messages with severity level lower than \texttt{LEVEL}. Valid
levels are \texttt{DEBUG} (no filtering), \texttt{INFO}, \texttt{WARNING},
\texttt{CRITICAL}, and \texttt{UNKNOWN} (default \texttt{WARNING}).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-u}, \texttt{-\/-unwrap-only}]~\\
Do not filter messages and do not output the summary, only unwrap long,
wrapped lines. The output should be very similar (but not equal) to the
input file, but with wrapped lines reconstructed. This activates
\texttt{-l debug}, \texttt{-\/-no-summary}, \texttt{-\/-no-page-delay},
\texttt{-\/-repetitions}, \texttt{-\/-be-redundant}, and
\texttt{-\/-shipouts}, and also supresses the verbose ``open/close file''
and ``shipout'' messages, simulating instead the \TeX{} format, with
parens and square brackets. This is useful if you prefer the reports
generated by some other tool but want to benefit from texlogsieve's line
unwrapping algorithm; the output generated by this option should be
parseable by other tools (but you probably need to coerce the other
tool not to try to unwrap lines).
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-silence-package=PKGNAME}]~\\
Filter out messages that can be identified as coming from the given package.
Use this option multiple times to suppress messages from several different
packages.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-silence-string=EXCERPT OF UNWANTED MESSAGE}]~\\
Filter out messages that contain the given string (you only need to provide
part of the message text for the whole message to be suppressed). Use this
option multiple times to suppress several different messages. The string
should be a single line, but that is not a problem for multiline log
messages: space characters in the provided string match any sequence of
whitespace characters in the message, including newlines. If needed, you
may precede the string with ``////'', in which case you can use lua-style
pattern matching (\url{https://www.lua.org/pil/20.2.html}). Note that the
string is used verbatim: you need not (and should not) enclose it in quotes
nor escape special characters such as ``\textbackslash''.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-silence-file=FILENAME OR FILE GLOB}]~\\
Filter out messages that have been generated while the given file was being
processed. Do \textbf{not} use absolute or relative paths, only filenames.
Simple file globs, such as ``\texttt{*.cls}'', work as expected. If you are
only using packages you already know, silencing ``\texttt{*.sty}'' may be a
good idea (note that this does not suppress all messages from all packages,
only the messages generated while the packages are being loaded). Use this
option multiple times to suppress messages from several different files.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-semisilence-file=FILENAME OR FILE GLOB}]~\\
Just like the previous option, but non-recursive. This means that messages
generated while the given file was being processed are excluded, but messages
generated by some other file that was opened by it are not. For example,
if ``\texttt{chapters.tex}'' includes (with \textbackslash input) the
files ``\texttt{chapter1.tex}'' and ``\texttt{chapter2.tex}'', using
``\texttt{-\/-silence-file=chapters.tex}'' will prevent messages generated
by any of the three files from being displayed. If, however, you use
``\texttt{-\/-semisilence-file=chapters.tex}'', messages generated by
\texttt{chapters.tex} will be suppressed, but messages generated by
\texttt{chapter1.tex} or \texttt{chapter2.tex} will not.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-add-[debug\textbar info\textbar warning\textbar
      critical]-message=MESSAGE}]~\\
Add \texttt{MESSAGE} to the list of messages known to the program with the
given severity level; see Section \ref{unrecognized} for more information
about this. Like \texttt{-\/-silence-string}, these should be a single line;
unlike \texttt{-\/-silence-string}, you need to embed \verb|\n| explicitly
to indicate line breaks (this is literally a backslash character followed
by the letter ``n'', \textbf{not} a linefeed character). You may precede
the string with ``////'' to use lua-style pattern matching, but embedding
\verb|\n| to indicate line breaks is unavoidable. Use these options multiple
times to add many different messages.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-set-to-level-[debug\textbar info\textbar warning\textbar
      critical]=EXCERPT OF MESSAGE}]~\\
Redefine the severity level of messages that contain the provided string
to the given level. Check the explanation for \texttt{-\/-silence-string},
as this works in a similar way. Use these options multiple times to change
the severity level of many different messages.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-c CFGFILE}, \texttt{-\/-config-file=CFGFILE}]~\\
Read options from the given configuration file in addition to
\texttt{texlogsieverc}.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-h}, \texttt{-\/-help}]
Show concise options description.
\end{description}

\begin{description}
\item[\texttt{-\/-version}]
Print program version.
\end{description}

\section{License}

Copyright © 2021, 2022 Nelson Lago \textless lago@ime.usp.br\textgreater\\
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later
\url{https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html}.\\
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.\\
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

\PrintChanges

\end{document}