Tech Note: Error and Debug Logs
Waltz automatically writes two logs to the disk while it is running, and is constantly keeping those two files up to date with the latest logging information throughout the lifetime of any given invocation of Waltz.
Location of Logs
The location of logs for Waltz will vary by operating system.
| Operating System | Log Location |
|---|---|
| Windows | {User}/AppData/Roaming/com.worldstage.waltz/
Where |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/com.worldstage.waltz/
|
| Linux | ~/.appdata/com.worldstage.waltz/
|
Active Session (Debug) Log
The first type of log that Waltz maintains is a complete debug log, containing not only error messages, but all information that was presented in the Console inside Waltz, along with other debug information typically hidden from the user. This log will always be called session_active.log, and will be in the operating-system specific directory from the table above. Each time you open Waltz, the file will be overwritten, unless an instance of Waltz has a lock on the file, in which case the new instance of Waltz will not write to the log.
Only a single Active Session log will be kept at a time, even if you have multiple active sessions of Waltz. Because this log is mostly for debugging, and because we assume a single instance of Waltz at a time for debugging, this log will not necessarily be accurate if you have multiple instance of Waltz running. This is not an issue on macOS, as only a single instance of Waltz, with multiple shows per instance. In that case, however, all active shows logs will be interleaved in the single file. In general, only run one show in Waltz if you want accurate information in the Active Session log.
Session Error Log
Because you often want to keep error logs around to collect more information for support, each instance of Waltz will create a second log with a name in the format of session_{MMMdd_yyyy-hh-mm-ssa}.log. For example, a log written at 2:15p (local time) on July 21, 2020 would be called session_Jul21_2020-2-15-00a.log. Keep in mind that the current system time is used, so if the machine upon which you are running Waltz is erroneously set to Pacific Time, or has the wrong date, the timestamp on the log will be similarly incorrect.
These logs differ from the active session log in that they only contains Errors and Exceptions generated in Waltz, they will not show Warning, Info, Debug, or Trace level messages.
