Tracing

Is there built-in support for tracing/logging?

Yes, in the System.Diagnostics namespace. There are two main classes that deal with tracing - Debug and Trace. They both work in a similar way - the difference is that tracing from the Debug class only works in builds that have the DEBUG symbol defined, whereas tracing from the Trace class only works in builds that have the TRACE symbol defined. Typically this means that you should use System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine for tracing that you want to work in debug and release builds, and System.Diagnostics.Debug.WriteLine for tracing that you want to work only in debug builds.

Can I redirect tracing to a file?

Yes. The Debug and Trace classes both have a Listeners property, which is a collection of sinks that receive the tracing that you send via Debug.WriteLine and Trace.WriteLine respectively. By default the Listeners collection contains a single sink, which is an instance of the DefaultTraceListener class. This sends output to the Win32 OutputDebugString() function and also the System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Log() method. This is useful when debugging, but if you're trying to trace a problem at a customer site, redirecting the output to a file is more appropriate. Fortunately, the TextWriterTraceListener class is provided for this purpose.

Here's how to use the TextWriterTraceListener class to redirect Trace output to a file:

    Trace.Listeners.Clear();
   FileStream fs = new FileStream( @"c:\log.txt", FileMode.Create, FileAccess.Write );
   Trace.Listeners.Add( new TextWriterTraceListener( fs ) );

   Trace.WriteLine( @"This will be writen to c:\log.txt!" );
   Trace.Flush();

Note the use of Trace.Listeners.Clear() to remove the default listener. If you don't do this, the output will go to the file and OutputDebugString(). Typically this is not what you want, because OutputDebugString() imposes a big performance hit.

Can I customise the trace output?

Yes. You can write your own TraceListener-derived class, and direct all output through it. Here's a simple example, which derives from TextWriterTraceListener (and therefore has in-built support for writing to files, as shown above) and adds timing information and the thread ID for each trace line:

    class MyListener : TextWriterTraceListener
    {
        public MyListener( Stream s ) : base(s)
        {
        }

        public override void WriteLine( string s )
        {
            Writer.WriteLine( "{0:D8} [{1:D4}] {2}", 
                Environment.TickCount - m_startTickCount, 
                AppDomain.GetCurrentThreadId(),
                s );
        }

        protected int m_startTickCount = Environment.TickCount;
    }

(Note that this implementation is not complete - the TraceListener.Write method is not overridden for example.)

The beauty of this approach is that when an instance of MyListener is added to the Trace.Listeners collection, all calls to Trace.WriteLine() go through MyListener, including calls made by referenced assemblies that know nothing about the MyListener class.

Are there any third party logging components available?

Log4net is a port of the established log4j Java logging component.