ImportExportWorker: Save logcat of latest operation #278
Conversation
|
Looks interesting and potentially useful - thanks! Just to make sure I understood what we're doing here - we're creating a new logcat process of our own and redirecting its output to a file (via |
Yep! Android internally runs a daemon called |
|
I still like the basic idea of making log capture much easier and simpler than the standard methods, but I'm not sure how I feel about having the app do this on its own, without user opt-in. We do try not to write sensitive data or metadata to the logs, but I'm not sure that we never do. I don't know that I can articulate a specific way in which this could lead to a breach of user privacy, but I have a general feeling that it would be better to not dump app logs to a semi-documented location without at least some user confirmation. I was thinking of leaving this behavior off by default and allowing users to enable it via a settings toggle under "Debug options," although I understand that this won't help for a non-reproducible error that occurs before the option is enabled. What do you think? |
|
Yep, I think that's perfectly reasonable. I can look into adding a toggle for it tomorrow. |
This updates the worker to spawn and kill logcat and the start and end of every operation. The output is written to sms-ie's external files directory, which is guaranteed to exist and be accessible using regular filesystem APIs. This is useful when an error is not easily reproducible and the user isn't able to get to their computer and grab a logcat via adb before the logs rotate. When an error occurs, the error dialog has a new button to open the directory containing the log file in the system file manager (DocumentsUI). DocumentsUI and USB access are the only two ways to access the external files directory in newer versions of Android. However, DocumentsUI is full featured enough that the user can share the log file or copy it elsewhere. The downside of these logs compared to `adb logcat` is that they will only contain our own logs. Logs from other apps or other system components (eg. telephony provider) are excluded. Signed-off-by: Andrew Gunnerson <accounts+github@chiller3.com>
Signed-off-by: Andrew Gunnerson <accounts+github@chiller3.com>
|
Done! I updated the error dialog so that the "Open log directory" button only shows up if logcat was enabled for that operation. If it wasn't, it'll include a message pointing the user to the new debug setting: |
(Please feel free to close this PR if you're not a fan of this approach or of this functionality in general.)
This updates the worker to spawn and kill logcat and the start and end of every operation. The output is written to sms-ie's external files directory (
/sdcard/Android/data/com.github.tmo1.sms_ie/files), which is guaranteed to exist and be accessible using regular filesystem APIs. This is useful when an error is not easily reproducible and the user isn't able to get to their computer and grab a logcat via adb before the logs rotate.When an error occurs, the error dialog has a new button to open the directory containing the log file in the system file manager (DocumentsUI). DocumentsUI and USB access are the only two ways to access the external files directory in newer versions of Android. However, DocumentsUI is full featured enough that the user can share the log file or copy it elsewhere.
The downside of these logs compared to
adb logcatis that they will only contain our own logs. Logs from other apps or other system components (eg. telephony provider) are excluded.