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My question is: what guidelines you have used for determining what is logged at each debug level?

I've built logging into several enterprise systems to support diagnosis in the field, and have always used simple numeric levels. It's a lot more convenient to write log("diagnostic stuff") if $DEBUG > 1; (or the equivalent from Log::Dispatch::Config) than it is to wrestle with symbolic names for levels.

Stay simple, and don't get too hung up with a rigid numbering schemes. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of the following:

Level 1 - all user input (clicks, gestures, text input)
Level 2 - "i'm here" from significant subroutines, plus any SQL queries that get executed
Level 3 - diagnostic info from significant algorithms, plus summarized results of any SQL queries
Level 4 - kitchen sink

All warning and error messages go into the log, unconditionally. Each log message is timestamped. That provides a cheap way of doing performance profiling.

95% of the time, turning on level 1 has been sufficient to gather enough info to reproduce the problem locally, if not make it glaringly evident just what had gone off the rails and why. It's amazing how hard it is to believe that users will try certain sequences of actions, or that certain sequence are even possible, until you see hard evidence in the logs.

In reply to Re: Determining debug levels by dws
in thread Determining debug levels by drewbie

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