704252 - Allow expansion of grouped-together repeating log messages

Status: NEW

(DevTools :: Console, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Ori Avtalion (salty-horse)]

When a log message repeats itself, the new messages are grouped into one line, and a counter is incremented.
The grouped line has the timestamp of the first message and does not change with subsequent ones.

There should be an option to expand such messages, in order to see their individual timestamps.

Also, I'm not sure if the grouped line should show the first or last timestamp - maybe it's worth discussing.

Comment 1

[Rob Campbell [:rc] (:robcee)]

Thanks for the bug report!

(In reply to Ori Avtalion (salty-horse) from comment #0)
> When a log message repeats itself, the new messages are grouped into one
> line, and a counter is incremented.
> The grouped line has the timestamp of the first message and does not change
> with subsequent ones.
> 
> There should be an option to expand such messages, in order to see their
> individual timestamps.

That would be nice. We could alternatively include a preference to collapse the logging messages or not as a simpler solution. Having an expandable list of repeats with timestamps would be nice though.

This also suggests the possibility to just show the list of timestamps on the next line.

> Also, I'm not sure if the grouped line should show the first or last
> timestamp - maybe it's worth discussing.

yeah, I can think of cases where I might want the first occurrence or the final message.

Comment 2

[Mihai Sucan [:msucan]]

A hacker news user suggested we can add an about:config pref to turn off grouping. This would be easy to do.

Comment 3

[Nicolas Medda]

Hi, I'm very interested in contributing to the firefox DevTools and start with this bug.
What is the solution that we want to solve this and how should I start.

Thank you in advance.

Comment 4

[Mike Hoye [:mhoye]]

Hi, Nicholas - 

Thanks for your interest. This isn't a great starter bug; it looks like it would be a better fit for somebody who has some familiarity with the Devtools codebase already. 

A good place to get started is to take a look at

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Introduction

... to get your development environment spun up, and then find a good first bug to work on through Bugs Ahoy:

http://www.joshmatthews.net/bugsahoy/

Thanks.

Comment 5

[Jeff Griffiths (:canuckistani) (:⚡︎)]

As well, DevTools has a specific 'getting started' page on the Wiki for people interested in contributing:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/DevTools/GetInvolved

Included are a list of potential 'first' and 'mentored' bugs.

Comment 6

[Ori Avtalion (salty-horse)]

Nicholas, here are my ideas as initial steps towards a useful behavior:

1) A setting that lets you control whether log messages should be grouped together or not.

(If you're looking for it, there's already a Developer Tools Web Console setting for "Enable timestamps".)

2) The counter that shows how many messages were repeated can be clicked to expand them all. I'm not sure if it should disappear at this point, or allow you to group them together again.

Comment 7

[Shubham Jindal [:shubham]]

Hi,
I want to work on this bug. Can someone mentor me?