[Zeek-Dev] Proposal: Make Zeek's debug logging thread-safe

[Jon Siwek]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2020 at 8:05 AM Bob Murphy <bob.murphy at corelight.com> wrote:

> My current implementation does just use a mutex to control access to the output file, and reports the time of generation.

I was also trying to break down a couple distinct requirements and
wondered if that actually covers the 2nd:

(1) Fix the "word salad"
(2) Ability to examine debug output from multiple threads in chronological order

Is it fine to just be able to understand the ordering of "when the
fprintf() happened" or is what's really needed is to understand
ordering of "when operations associated with debug messages happened"
?

Thread 1:
  Foo();
  LockedDebugMsg("I did Foo.");

Thread 2:
  Bar();
  LockedDebugMsg("I did Bar.");

debug.log
  [Timestamp 1] I did Foo.
  [Timestamp 2] I did Bar.

That debug.log doesn't really tell us whether Foo() happened before
Bar(), right?

- Jon