Allow Log File to be Deleted at Runtime

[rustbomber]

I use sinks-file on windows system, when web app runing, log write to file, now I want to delete the log file at runtime, windows report:

File is in use The operation could not be completed because the file was opened in dotnet.exe

I use shared parameter, set true, is not working.

my code :

const string template = "{Timestamp:yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.ffffff} {Level:u4} {SourceContext} {Message} {Exception}{NewLine}";
Log.Logger = new LoggerConfiguration()
    .ReadFrom.Configuration(config)
    .Enrich.FromLogContext()
    .MinimumLevel.Is(minimumLevel)
    .WriteTo.Console(outputTemplate: template)
    .WriteTo.Debug(outputTemplate: template)
    .WriteTo.File(path: Path.Combine(AppContext.BaseDirectory, "Logs", "log.txt"), outputTemplate: template,
        fileSizeLimitBytes: 5242880, rollingInterval: RollingInterval.Day, rollOnFileSizeLimit: true, retainedFileCountLimit: 31, shared:true, buffered: false).CreateLogger();

[nblumhardt]

Hi - shared: true sets the file to allow read-write sharing; deleting the file is not supported in this mode.

It seems like there are possibly two separate requirements here:

1. Allow the file to be deleted
2. Recreate the file when this happens

I think we could allow (1) without initially worrying about (2) - this might be handy, for instance, in the situation where unbounded log file growth occurs and the file needs to be removed before the process can be (safely?) stopped.

I'm not sure how widely valued this scenario is, though - any thoughts?

[lscorcia]

+1 for this issue and the related #128 . I have migrated a large solution from log4net to Serilog only to discover this issue when moving to production. Back to log4net until this gets resolved.

[dgxhubbard]

This is definitely an issue I wanted to switch to serilog but found this issue. When the app is allowing the log file to be deleted means there is less to sift through to find a problem. We do this all the time and it saves time finding issues. Why are you locking the log file?

[nblumhardt]

Thanks for the nudge!

Nothing's happened here because between my:

I'm not sure how widely valued this scenario is, though - any thoughts?

and any response was four years, which somewhat slowed thing down :-)

I think the next step would be for someone to investigate the impact of making this change (part 1, or parts 1 & 2) and can share some info on what would be required, and which other parts of the code might break (especially around rolling, perhaps?).

If the change is small and the impact low and well-understood, I don't think anyone has been opposed to supporting this - it's just a prioritization issue currently.

HTH!