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Ask HN: How do you automate logging bugs in your product?

• redpillbluepill 11y ago
  Our dev team use Sentry (getsentry.com). We had the hosted plan, and we also have one installed in a local server. You can check out their github repo as well https://github.com/getsentry/sentry https://github.com/getsentry/sentry
  • jbrooksuk 11y ago
    +1 for Sentry. This is what we use at work. For the side business I work (https://styleci.io https://styleci.io) we use Bugsnag; https://bugsnag.com https://bugsnag.com and a custom application.
  • dreen 11y ago
    We use sentry as well, great software.
  • lsemel 11y ago
    Adding another recommendation for Sentry.
• njovin 11y ago
  Rollbar (rollbar.com) dedupes error occurrences. It automatically integrates with JIRA and github but you could probably tap into their API to integrate if with unfuddle.
• techaddict009 11y ago
  One of company I worked for used : https://www.graylog.org/ https://www.graylog.org/
• nowarninglabel 11y ago
  We have a "log cop" responsible for looking at the errors in the logs and being the human conduit to filing a ticket for a bug as needed. We've got it down pretty well now where we have trained folks on it and rotate the responsibility each sprint and doesn't take more than a hour or so a week of the designated person's time. Part of making it doable though was getting rid of a lot of the superfluous logging we were doing.
• dexterbt1 11y ago
  Wait, you seem to equate a runtime exception as a bug, which to me are two different but related concepts. Directly posting every single exception raised to your bug tracker is a sure fire way to flood and overwhelm you. Logging to unfuddle, to me, is the wrong way to do it. Learn proper Ops. Learn the concepts properly: logging for application monitoring and trace debugging is one thing. Posting a confirm functional bug report is another. Error detection/escalation is best left to proper tools such as nagios/zabbix where they have grouping of errors etc. Application level tracing is best left to a logging tools like sentry/logstash/new relic/etc. Use the d
  • cakes 11y ago
    Every runtime exception as a bug would seem overwhelming. Wanting to know when runtime exceptions happen (and grouping them) is very helpful a lot of times but it seems like by itself (without context) would only get in the way of trying to parse what is and isn't really happening in some cases. Especially when trying to sort out what needs immediate attention and what needs attention at some point later.
  • _virtu 11y ago
    What is a confirm functional bug report? What does your workflow for logging exceptions and errors look like? What sort of separation do you have between application exceptions and other types of exceptions such as database connectivity? How do either of the aforementioned exceptions/errors materialize into a bug?
    • dexterbt1 11y ago
      Sorry for the typos, I was typing this on mobile. I meant "confirmed functional bug report"; and by that I mean a reproducible scenario that actually is caused by faulty code path leading to wrong result/behaviour. Usually, in my experience, bugs are ideally reported by people after some repeatable / confirmable thought-out process. If I understood you correctly, you are automatically posting every exception to your bug tracker. My point is that not all exceptions are bugs. And certainly not all bugs are discoverable through exceptions. > What sort of separation do you have between application exceptions > and other types of exceptions such as database connectivity? How do > either of the aforementioned exceptions/errors materialize into a bug? These are great questions that you should be asking while architecting / implementing / testing / running your application (i.e. whole lifecycle). Again, not all exceptions are bugs. Many, but not all exceptions are to die / crash your program. Many exceptions are definitely recoverable (unexpected input), while others are not (failed network, unreachable DB). If you are using a decent logging framework, it’s obvious that they have different levels for logging messages. FATAL/ERROR usually mean unrecoverable, while WARNINGs are typically recoverable but may prompt further investigation for the log audience, and INFO/DEBUG are generally harmless, non-error messages. This design has become widespread across many languages/frameworks and makes you ponder why. > What does your workflow for logging exceptions and errors look like? My view is that error handling is generally a delicate art and science (see why Golang doesn’t have exceptions, a decision made by veteran language designers!). I follow the principle of Fail Fast, especially for unrecoverable errors; that is, don’t hide fatal errors. Bubble up exceptions. Carefully design your layers to raise and catch the appropriate exceptions, if at all (see also Erlang’s let it crash principle). c2 wiki has some good starting discussions: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FailFast http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FailFast http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FirstRuleOfLogging http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FirstRuleOfLogging Note, these are all abstract and conceptual, and not tool oriented. They go back to the design of your system and your processes, to fit your organization / communication structure. Also not stated is the great importance of automated tests (unit tests / integration tests / functional tests). Remember I mentioned confirmed bugs? Because at the very least, every bug discovered should have a corresponding test written to prevent regression. A decent engineering team should have good grasp and practice of many levels of automated testing. P.S. as for our tools, our stack uses logstash/elasticsearch for distributed logging + opsview/nagios NRPE for ops-related detection/escalation of issues that warrant attention.
• jakozaur 11y ago
  I use Sumo Logic and their Log Reduce feature. That automatically aggregates exception patterns. That eliminates duplicates and gives nice summary: https://www.sumologic.com/resource/featured-videos/demo-sumo-logic-log-reduce-next-generation-log-analytics-featured-video/ https://www.sumologic.com/resource/featured-videos/demo-sumo... Disclaimer: I work for Sumo Logic.
• kornish 11y ago
  We log runtime errors in Slack using a webhook (have an #errors channel which receives a post with a stack trace and useful metadata), then notice patterns in error generation manually, discuss the errors and why they might be happening in Slack, and eventually funnel urgent or important ones into our task management system. Right now, we don't have a ton of traffic so the errors channel receives a very manageable volume. I imagine this sort of approach would get overwhelming for a product with more concurrent users or more runtime-error-generating code paths.
• simonmorley 11y ago
  We use Airbrake. It also allows us to create errors manually- generally used for logging exceptions from within rescue blocks atm.
• jamies888888 11y ago
  I log JavaScript-based errors using Google Analytics events. Easy to set up (especially if you already have GA set up) and the graphing and grouping capabilities of GA are quite well-suited for bug trend tracking.
  • zwetan 11y ago
    almost the same but I log using the exception call instead of event https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/protocol/v1/parameters#exception https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection...
• benwoodward 11y ago
  After trying a few alternatives, I've settled on https://bugsnag.com https://bugsnag.com
  • abluecloud 11y ago
    +1, their exception aggregation is lovely
• kuahyeow 11y ago
  We have been trialling http://squash.io/ http://squash.io/ at work as a aggregation for our errors and it's working out well so far. Next step is to integrate into our ticket tracker.
• michaelmior 11y ago
  I'm going to throw out a recommendation for Rollbar[0]. Of the tools I used, I found it's great and providing the info necessary to quickly track down and fix errors. It's also got some useful tools for triage built in. [0] https://rollbar.com/ https://rollbar.com/
• fizerkhan 11y ago
  Give it a try: https://www.atatus.com https://www.atatus.com which provides JavaScript error tracking and Real user monitoring.