1656513 - "mach test --verbose" is not verbose enough. --log-mach-verbose should be implied or documented

Status: NEW

(Testing :: General, defect, P3)

Description

[Rob Wu [:robwu]]

The default log verbosity of mach test is far from sufficient to effectively debug test failures.

There is a --verbose flag that adds just a bit more information (e.g. info(...) calls in xpcshell tests), but test messages (e.g. ok(...)) aren't logged, unless --log-mach-verbose is set. In contrast, when I use ./mach xpcshell-test, I do get all relevant test output.

For mach test, --verbose should imply --log-mach-verbose. If not, this option should at least be documented more clearly. Its existence is not obvious, let alone the need for this flag. It is defined at testing/mozbase/mozlog/mozlog/commandline.py, but not literally. I didn't find anything relevant in m-c when I searched for log_mach_verbose, mach_verbose, mach-verbose, machVerbose.

Comment 1

[Geoff Brown [:gbrown]]

'mach help test' does show:
...
Global Arguments:
-v, --verbose Print verbose output.
...
Output Logging:
Each option represents a possible logging format and takes a filename to
write that format to, or '-' to write to stdout. Some options are provided
by the mozlog utility; see https://firefox-source-
docs.mozilla.org/mozbase/mozlog.html for extended documentation.
...
--log-mach-verbose Enables verbose mode for the given formatter.
...
That's not a lot of information, but it's something. I find it difficult to understand (and remember!) the difference between --verbose and --log-mach-verbose.

I also find --log-mach-level=debug (or similar) helpful sometimes.

Comment 2

[BugBot [:suhaib / :marco/ :calixte]]

The severity field is not set for this bug.
:gbrown, could you have a look please?

For more information, please visit auto_nag documentation.