Show HN: A VS Code extension to debug async Rust logs from tracing

2 points

a year ago

Debugging async Rust is often a pain [1][2]. The `tracing` library [3] provides great abstractions to deal with logs generated during concurrent code execution, but eyeballing nested spans in the terminal is cumbersome.

We thought "what if we could navigate async logs and nested spans in VS Code?". We looked into it and made a simple VS Code extension.

It's a prototype, but if you're interested in trying it out, we'd love some feedback!

Github: github.com/hyperdrive-eng/traceback

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References:

[1]: "Is there any way to actually debug async Rust? [...] debugging any sort of async code (which is ALL code in a backend project), is an absolutely terrible experience" ~Source: reddit.com/r/rust/comments/1dsynnr/is_there_any_way_to_actually_debug_async_rust

[2]: "Why is async code in Rust considered especially hard compared to Go or just threads?" ~Source: reddit.com/r/rust/comments/16kzqpi/why_is_async_code_in_rust_considered_especially

[3]: docs.rs/tracing/latest/tracing