Logging

Buck2 produces detailed event logs for each invocation, which follow a schema outlined in app/buck2_data/data.proto in the buck2 parent directory. The event logs that Buck2 produces automatically are always in protobuf zstd-compressed format (see Viewing the event log for more details).

Event log format

Warning: the schemas are all subject to change, so we do not recommend relying on the format. For the source of truth, take a look at data.proto.

Invocation header

The first line of the event log is always the Invocation header:

Invocation {
    # CLI args split into a list of strings
    command_line_args: List[str],
    # Expanded CLI args, which expand any argsfiles
    expanded_command_line_args: List[str],
    # Absolute path of the current working directory of the Buck2 command
    working_dir: str,
    # UUID of the Buck2 command
    trace_id: str,
}

Command result footer

The last line is always the CommandResult:

Result {
    # One of the result types of CommandResult protobuf type in data.proto
    result: BuildResponse | CqueryResponse | BxlResponse | ...,
}

Buck events

The rest of the event log contain BuckEvents, which are either SpanStartEvents, SpanEndEvents, or InstantEvents.

The BuckEvent format is roughly as follows:

Event {
    # When the event was fired. This is always a 2-item list, where the first
    # value is millis, second value is micros
    timestamp: List[u64],
    # UUID of the Buck2 command, same one as the invocation header
    trace_id: str,
    # A trace-unique 64-bit integer identifying this event's span ID,
    # if this event begins a new span or belongs to one.
    span_id: u64,
    # A trace-unique 64-bit identifying the span that this event is logically
    # parented to.
    parent_id: u64,
    # See sections below for more details
    data: SpanStart | SpanEnd | Instant,
}

Span starts

The SpanStartEvent indicates that a span of work starting:

SpanStart {
    # One of the data types of SpanStartEvent protobuf type in data.proto
    data: AnalysisStart | ActionExecutionStart | ...,
}

Span ends

The SpanEndEvent indicates that a span of work has finished:

SpanEnd {
    # Duration of the span
    duration_us: u64,
    # CPU poll times for this span
    stats: SpanStats,
    # One of the data types of SpanEndEvent protobuf type in data.proto
    data: AnalysisEnd | ActionExecutionEnd | ...,
}

# CPU poll times for this span
SpanStats {
  max_poll_time_us: u64,
  total_poll_time_us: u64,
}

Instant events

The InstantEvent represents a single point in time:

InstantEvent {
    # One of the data types of InstantEvent protobuf type in data.proto
    data: ConsoleMessage | ActionError | ...,
}

One specific instant event type that may be of interest is the SnapShot event, which includes some interesting details like RSS, CPU, I/O, remote execution, and DICE metrics.

Viewing the event log

Event logs can be accessed using commands under buck2 log show, which outputs the event logs in JSONL format. You can run buck2 log show --help to see all available options. Some useful commands:

• Show the logs for the most recent Buck2 command:

buck2 log show

• Show the logs for a specific Buck2 command, given the command's UUID:

buck2 log show --trace-id <UUID>

• Show the logs for a recent Buck2 command:

buck2 log show --recent <NUMBER>

The JSON schema is derived from the protobuf types, and the log itself could be quite large. jq can be useful to find specific things. For example, this jq script shows the max event delay between a snapshot event creation on the daemon side, and when the client receives it.

buck2 log show | jq -s '
  map(
    .Event.data.Instant.data.Snapshot.this_event_client_delay_ms
      | select(. != null)
  ) | max'