NanoLog

• Low Latency C++11 Logging Library.
• It's fast. Very fast. See Latency benchmark
• NanoLog only uses standard headers so it should work with any C++11 compliant compiler.
• Supports typical logger features namely multiple log levels, log file rolling and asynchronous writing to file.

Design highlights

• Zero copying of string literals.
• Lazy conversion of integers and doubles to ascii.
• No heap memory allocation for log lines representable in less than ~256 bytes.
• Minimalistic header includes. Avoids common pattern of header only library. Helps in compilation times of projects.

Guaranteed and Non Guaranteed logging

• Nanolog supports Guaranteed logging i.e. log messages are never dropped even at extreme logging rates.
• Nanolog also supports Non Guaranteed logging. Uses a ring buffer to hold log lines. In case of extreme logging rate when the ring gets full (i.e. the consumer thread cannot pop items fast enough), the previous log line in the slot will be dropped. Does not block producer even if the ring buffer is full.

Usage

#include "NanoLog.hpp"

int main()
{
  // Ensure initialize is called once prior to logging.
  // This will create log files like /tmp/nanolog1.txt, /tmp/nanolog2.txt etc.
  // Log will roll to the next file after every 1MB.
  // This will initialize the guaranteed logger.
  nanolog::initialize(nanolog::GuaranteedLogger(), "/tmp/", "nanolog", 1);

  // Or if you want to use the non guaranteed logger -
  // ring_buffer_size_mb - LogLines are pushed into a mpsc ring buffer whose size
  // is determined by this parameter. Since each LogLine is 256 bytes,
  // ring_buffer_size = ring_buffer_size_mb * 1024 * 1024 / 256
  // In this example ring_buffer_size_mb = 3.
  // nanolog::initialize(nanolog::NonGuaranteedLogger(3), "/tmp/", "nanolog", 1);

  for (int i = 0; i < 5; ++i)
  {
    LOG_INFO << "Sample NanoLog: " << i;
  }

  // Change log level at run-time.
  nanolog::set_log_level(nanolog::LogLevel::CRIT);
  LOG_WARN << "This log line will not be logged since we are at loglevel = CRIT";

  return 0;
}

Latency benchmark of Guaranteed logger

• A google search for fast logger C++ gives the first result spdlog
• There's an interesting article on worst case latency by the author of g3log
• So let's benchmark NanoLog vs spdlog vs g3log vs reckless.
• Take a look at nano_vs_spdlog_vs_g3log_vs_reckless.cpp
• Benchmark was compiled with g++ 4.8.4 running Linux Mint 17 on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz

Thread Count 1 - percentile latency numbers in microseconds (lower number means better performance)

Thread Count 2 - percentile latency numbers in microseconds (lower number means better performance)

Thread Count 3 - percentile latency numbers in microseconds (lower number means better performance)

Thread Count 4 - percentile latency numbers in microseconds (lower number means better performance)

Latency benchmark of Non guaranteed logger

• Take a look at non_guaranteed_nanolog_benchmark.cpp for the code used to generate the latency numbers.
• Benchmark was compiled with g++ 4.8.4 running Linux Mint 17 on Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2630QM CPU @ 2.00GHz

  Thread count: 1
  Average NanoLog Latency = 131 nanoseconds
  Thread count: 2
  Average NanoLog Latency = 182 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 272 nanoseconds
  Thread count: 3
  Average NanoLog Latency = 216 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 209 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 315 nanoseconds
  Thread count: 4
  Average NanoLog Latency = 229 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 221 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 233 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 332 nanoseconds
  Thread count: 5
  Average NanoLog Latency = 247 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 240 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 320 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 345 nanoseconds
  Average NanoLog Latency = 383 nanoseconds

  Crash handling

• g3log has support for crash handling. I do not see the point in re-inventing the wheel. Have a look at that what's done there and if it works for you, give Kjell credit and use his crash handling code.

Tips to make it faster!

• NanoLog uses standard library chrono timestamps. Your platform / os may have non-standard but faster timestamps. Use them!