NAME
annotate-output - annotate program output with time and stream
SYNOPSIS
annotate-output [options] program [args ...]
DESCRIPTION
annotate-output will execute the specified program, while prepending
every line with the current time and O for stdout and E for stderr.
OPTIONS
+FORMAT
Controls the timestamp format, as per date(1). Defaults to
"%H:%M:%S".
-h, --help
Display a help message and exit successfully.
EXAMPLE
$ annotate-output make
21:41:21 I: Started make
21:41:21 O: gcc -Wall program.c
21:43:18 E: program.c: Couldn't compile, and took me ages to find out
21:43:19 E: collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
21:43:19 E: make: *** [all] Error 1
21:43:19 I: Finished with exitcode 2
BUGS
Since stdout and stderr are processed in parallel, it can happen that
some lines received on stdout will show up before later-printed stderr
lines (and vice-versa).
This is unfortunately very hard to fix with the current annotation
strategy. A fix would involve switching to PTRACE'ing the process.
Giving nice a (much) higher priority over the executed program could
however cause this behaviour to show up less frequently.
The program does not work as well when the output is not linewise. In
particular, when an interactive program asks for input, the question
might not be shown until after you have answered it. This will give
the impression that the annotated program has hung, while it has not.
SEE ALSO
date(1)
SUPPORT
This program is community-supported (meaning: you'll need to fix it
yourself). Patches are however appreciated, as is any feedback
(positive or negative).
AUTHOR
annotate-output was written by Jeroen van Wolffelaar
<jeroen@wolffelaar.nl> This manpage comes under the same copyright as
annotate-output itself, read /usr/bin/annotate-output (or wherever you
install it) for the details.