zap VS zerolog

The project currently uses slog package from standard library for logging. But switching to a more advanced logger like zap could offer more flexibility and features.

It's nice to have this in the standard library, but it doesn't solve any existing pain points around structured log metadata and contexts. We use zap [0] and store a zap logger on the request context which allows different parts of the request pipeline to log with things like tenantid, traceId, and correlationId automatically appended. But getting a logger off the context is annoying, leads to inconsistent logging practices, and creates a logger dependency throughout most of our Go code.

[0] https://github.com/uber-go/zap

Kubebuilder, like much of the k8s ecosystem, utilizes zap for logging. Out of the box, the Kubebuilder zap configuration outputs a timestamp for each log, which gets formatted using scientific notation. This makes it difficult for me to read the time of an event just by glancing at it. Personally, I prefer ISO 8601, so let's change it!

What else would you expect from a structured logging package?

To me it absolutely makes sense as the default and standard for 99% of applications, and the API isn't much unlike something like Zap[0] (a popular Go structured logger).

The attributes aren't an "arbitrary" concept, they're a completely normal concept for structured loggers. Groups are maybe less standard, but reasonable nevertheless.

I'm not sure if you're aware that this is specifically a structured logging package. There already is a "simple" logging package[1] in the sodlib, and has been for ages, and isn't particularly fast either to my knowledge. If you want really fast you take a library (which would also make sure to optimize allocations heavily).

[0]: https://pkg.go.dev/go.uber.org/zap

[1]: https://pkg.go.dev/log

And finally for structured logging: https://github.com/uber-go/zap

For logging: I recommend using Uber Zap https://github.com/uber-go/zap It will log stack backtraces and makes it super easy to debug errors when deployed. I typically log in the business logic and not below. And log at the entry for failures to start the system. Maybe not necessary for this example, but it’s an essential piece of any API backend.

Be aware that there is a performance impact compared to using zerolog directly [0] (my uneducated guess is it is likely due to pointer indirection).

[0]: https://github.com/rs/zerolog/issues/571#issuecomment-166202...

Things I can't live without in a new Go project in no particular order:

- https://github.com/golangci/golangci-lint - meta-linter

- https://goreleaser.com - automate release workflows

- https://magefile.org - build tool that can version your tools

- https://github.com/ory/dockertest/v3 - run containers for e2e testing

- https://github.com/ecordell/optgen - generate functional options

- https://golang.org/x/tools/cmd/stringer - generate String()

- https://mvdan.cc/gofumpt - stricter gofmt

- https://github.com/stretchr/testify - test assertion library

- https://github.com/rs/zerolog - logging

- https://github.com/spf13/cobra - CLI framework

FWIW, I just lifted all the tools we use for https://github.com/authzed/spicedb

We've also written some custom linters that might be useful for other folks: https://github.com/authzed/spicedb/tree/main/tools/analyzers

Can you compare it against zerolog?

Hello gophers, I am using https://github.com/uber-go/fx and https://github.com/rs/zerolog for logging.

Hovewer it is not bad to export such a function, if it is done purely for convenience. For example github.com/rs/zerolog works on a logger instances, which can be created manually, but they also provide a github.com/rs/zerolog/blob//log package, which provide you access to the global logger which is more convenient in most cases

IDE: use whatever make you productive. I personally use vscode. VCS: git, as golang communities use github heavily as base for many libraries. AFAIK Linter: use staticcheck for linting as it looks like mostly used linting tool in go, supported by many also. In Vscode it will be recommended once you install go plugin. Libraries/Framework: actually the standard libraries already included many things you need, decent enough for your day-to-day development cycles(e.g. `net/http`). But here are things for extra: - Struct fields validator: validator - Http server lib: chi router , httprouter , fasthttp (for non standard http implementations, but fast) - Web Framework: echo , gin , fiber , beego , etc - Http client lib: most already covered by stdlib(net/http), so you rarely need extra lib for this, but if you really need some are: resty - CLI: cobra - Config: godotenv , viper - DB Drivers: sqlx , postgre , sqlite , mysql - nosql: redis , mongodb , elasticsearch - ORM: gorm , entgo , sqlc(codegen) - JS Transpiler: gopherjs - GUI: fyne - grpc: grpc - logging: zerolog - test: testify , gomock , dockertest - and many others you can find here

I use zerolog myself and have seen it being used in production several times. Also they have a list of who uses zerolog

This would be so awesome if it was extending an awesome logger like https://github.com/rs/zerolog. Personally I love zerolog because of how it handles different data types including structs!

logrus README recommended using other libraries such as Zerolog, Zap, and Apex.