annotate-output

ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)          General Commands Manual         ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)

NAME
       annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream

SYNOPSIS
       annotate-output [options] program [args ...]

DESCRIPTION
       annotate-output  will  execute  the specified program, while prepending
       every line with the current time and O for stdout and E for stderr.

OPTIONS
       +FORMAT
              Controls the timestamp format,  as  per  date(1).   Defaults  to
              "%H:%M:%S".

       -h, --help
              Display a help message and exit successfully.

EXAMPLE
       $ annotate-output make
       21:41:21 I: Started make
       21:41:21 O: gcc -Wall program.c
       21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out
       21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
       21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1
       21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2

BUGS
       Since  stdout  and stderr are processed in parallel, it can happen that
       some lines received on stdout will show up before later-printed  stderr
       lines (and vice-versa).

       This  is  unfortunately  very  hard  to fix with the current annotation
       strategy.  A fix would involve switching  to  PTRACE'ing  the  process.
       Giving  nice  a  (much) higher priority over the executed program could
       however cause this behaviour to show up less frequently.

       The program does not work as well when the output is not linewise.   In
       particular,  when  an  interactive program asks for input, the question
       might not be shown until after you have answered it.   This  will  give
       the impression that the annotated program has hung, while it has not.

SEE ALSO
       date(1)

SUPPORT
       This  program  is  community-supported  (meaning: you'll need to fix it
       yourself).  Patches are however appreciated, as is any feedback  (posi-
       tive or negative).

AUTHOR
       annotate-output  was  written  by Jeroen van Wolffelaar <jeroen@wolffe-
       laar.nl>. This manpage comes under the same copyright as  annotate-out-
       put  itself, read /usr/bin/annotate-output (or wherever you install it)
       for the details.

DEBIAN                         Debian Utilities             ANNOTATE-OUTPUT(1)