Log files timestamping

Hi!

Would it be possible to prepend timestamps to each editor's log line? (Or more generally set format to logging, e.g., as in syslog).

It's needed for profiling and finding the most time-consuming operations. Otherwise, there's lots of unimportant "0.00...seconds" reports, but it's impossible to find the greediest.

 

Can you add timestamps to logs in log files please? Only having them in editor is a limitation.

 

Thanks for the quick response, Karl. Just so it was clear, I was referring to having timestamps inside of standalone player log files - not editor. For all of the bug reports that come in from our playerbase, we ask for logs. Without timestamps it makes it quite difficult to know when stuff happens.

 

We have over 2 million players and it's too late to ask them to do it after they've already experienced the bug. To work, it'd need to be something that is turned on by us ahead of doing builds.

 

Confirming this 'works' - a bit ugly, sample lines looks like this, bold is what is added, but solves a problem for us at least


2022-04-26T08:59:29.580Z|0x7f43819a4300|System name: Linux
2022-04-26T08:59:29.580Z|0x7f43819a4300|Distro version: #1 SMP Wed Mar 2 18:38:38 UTC 2022

 

So i need a script and place
Environment.SetEnvironmentVariable("UNITY_EXT_LOGGING", "1");
in Awake or Start?
Am i missing something or do i understand something wrong, because that does not work for me.
(Tried it with Unity 2020.3 on windows and linux)

 

Oh, silly me. Thank you for the info.

For everyone else who is searching for this:
this works for the editor.log but not for the player.log, so it's not a solution for a build.
The way to go would be the Application.LogCallback Karl Jones mentioned

 

Nice:

 

that indeed sounds very intriguing and is apparently even added to 2020.3.37f1, do you know by any chance how this works? I can't find the setting for this or documentation

 

Did anybody figure this out?
The -timestamps argument seems promising but there's no documentation available.

 

Adding

-timestamps

as a command line argument when starting the editor works like a charm, just tried that on our build system, will test it with the player (i.e. the game build itself):

2022-11-29T17:39:41.308Z|0x3598|BuildPlayerGenerator: Succeeded2022-11-29T17:39:41.308Z|0x3598|

2022-11-29T17:39:41.361Z|0x3598|Asset Pipeline Refresh: Total: 0.022 seconds - Initiated by RefreshV2(NoUpdateAssetOptions)

2022-11-29T17:39:41.361Z|0x3598|[ScriptCompilation] Requested script compilation because: Recompiling scripts for player build.2022-11-29T17:39:41.361Z|0x3598|

2022-11-29T17:39:41.361Z|0x3598|BuildPlayer: start building target 24

@karl_jones there is two things I would like to request, if I may:
- The ability to also enable showing the log level (Warning, Error, Exception etc) in the log line, analogue to how

-timestamps

does it for well timestamps. Especially for game servers, this is quite vital to have.
- Could you see to it that

-timestamps

is added to the documentation? https://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/CommandLineArguments.html

 

Anyone had any luck getting this new CLI arg to work in a standalone player? Doesn't do anything for me on a standalone build built with 2020.3.43f1. It does work on the editor tho.

 

Quick update, this is now a recognised issue here https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/is...er-dot-log-when-using-the-timestamps-argument

 

That link is a 404, is there an update for this?

 

Nope, only works in editor for some reason (Unity 2021.3.19).
Neither setting the environment variable in a shell before starting a player build, nor the `-timestamps` argument are working for me. Might report another bug.

 

Thank you for posting the response here.

I guess mentioning the functionality in the release notes as existing for player builds was a mistake then.

 

For whoever is passing by, maybe this package might be a viable workaround, but didn't check for myself yet: https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/com.unity.logging@1.0/manual/index.html

 

Any updates on this? Timestamps in logs for standalone builds is one of the most important things to help us debug games in production.

 

+1 to please add timestamps. It's incredibly important to logging on remote servers. I shouldn't have to roll my own solution or use a 3rd party logging library to get such a basic function of logging.

 

this is honestly embarrassing, end of 2023 and after all these years not to have this as a feature

 

Yeah, it's kind of mind boggling.