MSBuildStructuredLog

A logger for MSBuild that records a structured representation of executed targets, tasks, property and item values. It can greatly simplify build investigations and provides a portable log interchange format (*.binlog) and a rich interactive log viewer app.

Homepage: https://msbuildlog.com

View binlogs in the Browser: https://live.msbuildlog.com

Important: the NuGet package is now being published to https://nuget.org/packages/MSBuild.StructuredLogger (old location: https://nuget.org/packages/Microsoft.Build.Logging.StructuredLogger). Please update to use the new Package Id.

Thanks to SignPath.io for providing a free code signing service and to the SignPath Foundation for a free code signing certificate to sign the installer.

Install:

Install from https://msbuildlog.com.

The app updates automatically via Squirrel (after launch it checks for updates in background), next launch starts the newly downloaded latest version.

Installing the Avalonia version on Mac:

Download the latest release for arm64 or x64.

Alternatively, you can install from Homebrew:

brew install structuredlogviewer

Building & Running the Avalonia version on Mac:

git clone https://github.com/KirillOsenkov/MSBuildStructuredLog
cd MSBuildStructuredLog
./run.sh

Alternatively, a longer version:

1. dotnet build MSBuildStructuredLog.Avalonia.sln
2. dotnet publish MSBuildStructuredLog.Avalonia.sln --self-contained -o <some_dir> (I used $HOME/tools/artifacts/StructuredLogViewer.Avalonia)
3. make a script $HOME/bin/structured-log-viewer (or whatever’s on your PATH):

#! /bin/sh
exec dotnet ${HOME}/tools/artifacts/StructuredLogViewer.Avalonia/publish/StructuredLogViewer.Avalonia.dll "$@"

Requirements:

Windows:

• .NET Framework 4.7.2
• MSBuild 16.0
• Visual Studio 2019

Mac:

• .NET 8 SDK

Usage:

Starting with MSBuild 15.3 you can pass the new /bl switch to msbuild.exe to record a binary build log to msbuild.binlog, in the same folder as the project/solution being built:

or you can build the solution or open an existing log file through the viewer app:

Alternatively (useful for older versions of MSBuild) you can attach the logger to any MSBuild-based build using the logger library: StructuredLogger.dll. It is available in a NuGet package: https://www.nuget.org/packages/MSBuild.StructuredLogger

msbuild solution.sln /t:Rebuild /v:diag /noconlog /logger:BinaryLogger,%localappdata%\MSBuildStructuredLogViewer\app-2.1.596\StructuredLogger.dll;1.binlog

To use a portable version of the logger (e.g. with the dotnet msbuild command) you need a .NET Standard version of StructuredLogger.dll, not the .NET Framework (Desktop) version.

Download this NuGet package: https://www.nuget.org/packages/MSBuild.StructuredLogger/2.1.545 and inside it there’s the lib\netstandard2.0\StructuredLogger.dll. Try passing that to dotnet build like this:

dotnet msbuild Some.sln /v:diag /nologo /logger:BinaryLogger,"packages\MSBuild.StructuredLogger.2.1.545\lib\netstandard2.0\StructuredLogger.dll";"C:\Users\SomeUser\Desktop\binarylog.binlog"

Read more about the log formats here: https://github.com/KirillOsenkov/MSBuildStructuredLog/wiki/Log-Format

Features:

• Preprocess project files (with all imports inlined), right-click on a project -> Preprocess
• If a log has embedded files, you can view the list of files, full-text search in all files, and use the Space key (or double-click) on most nodes to view the source code.
• Displays double-writes (when files from different sources are written to the same destination during a build, thus causing non-determinism)
• Displays target dependencies for each target
• Narrow down the search results using the under() or project() clauses to only display results under a certain parent or project.
• Each node in the tree has a context menu. Ctrl+C to copy an item and the entire subtree to Clipboard as text.
• Delete to hide nodes from the tree (to get uninteresting stuff out of the way).
• Open and save log files (option to save log files to .xml)
• Logs can include the source code project files and all imported files used during the build.

Investigating problems with MSBuildStructuredLog

Open an issue if you’re running into something weird and I can take a look into it. If MSBuildStructuredLog crashes during the build, it will attempt to write the exception call stack to:

%localappdata%\Microsoft\MSBuildStructuredLog\LoggerExceptions.txt

MSBuild Resources

• https://msbuildlog.com
• https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild/blob/main/documentation/wiki/MSBuild-Resources.md
• https://github.com/dotnet/msbuild/blob/main/documentation/wiki/MSBuild-Tips-&-Tricks.md