Really, should logs also be documentation now ? Just mindlessly logging the same "advice" over and over again each time the error happen ?
I write software that is generally run low in the stack, quietly doing some mundane tasks that are business-critical but rarely thought about. If one of our clients has to mess with our software beyond the occasional update, that was a failing. Not all software is like this, but lots of it is -- its value is that no human needs to be involved.
I need to write log messages with the expectation of an audience who doesn't know much about the software -- it's been running uninterrupted for months or years and suddenly something has gone wrong. If the log line doesn't tell the user how to solve their problem, I will end up getting a call.
No, the most best thing is to point to the documentation which has that, and not printig out manpages of docs in error messages now.
> I write software that is generally run low in the stack
What stack, how low? Me too.. that low that I usually cannot return or even log a " see error code doc at http.." string for various reasons (bandwidth, mem, performance) but only have error codes ;)
If I'm starting a service and see a pointer in the logs to documentation, that seems like an incredibly broken approach to me. Why would I look at missing or out-of-date documentation that may or may not be at hand when the code that knows the problem is right there and can just tell me? A log message like you're describing might as well say, "Something went wrong, but I don't want to tell you what. Instead check page 43 of the document in the third file cabinet from the left in that room over there on your right. No, your other right."
> Something went wrong, but I don't want to tell you what.
is somewhat disingenius of an example. Error logs should tell in exhausting detail what went wrong. Ops needs that to analyse the situation, and the vendor will have much less trouble reproducing the error. However, suggesting specific fixes could be disastrous. Furthermore, documentation should already be in a form that operations can be expected to work with also in crisis situations.
Not even to mention the fact that new or changed error messages caused a landslide in costs in translations to various languages. I guess this product has no localization? At that time, when I was working at such a product that had it, we had to go through a deliberate process to describe why we want to change it, what the impact is, etc. Tell me you want 100 new messages and you will be stuck in meetings for the next month.
In their case, though, it seems they at least have the support in management for it. I hope it turns out better for them than it did for me.
If it's in the early lifecycle, absolutely, because it's most actionable. X is set wrong, Y can't be reached, etc, guide whoever is operating the system how to fix it.
If it's mid cycle, it's often post-hoc, but context is worth its weight in gold. Less about telling the operator how to fix and more about why it broke, to avoid in the future.
End of cycle, whatever.
There are people who don't read formal documentation but do read logs, after all.
If the advice is the same over and over again, then yes, give the advice over and over again. I wouldn't want to assume that someone has read every line of the logs, or has started to read top-to-bottom, so the advice should always be among the most recent lines in the log, and the only way to ensure that is to give the advice again each time the error happens.
So why not provide docs on how to solve the error along with the error.
Remember that often the person reading the logs is not the person who wrote the software. Maybe it's an Ops person at 2AM trying to fix a broken deploy. Maybe it's a developer who joined the company 3 years after the software was written. Maybe the log is passing through an error message from 3 layers deep in the stack. The more literate your logs are, the better.
In other words, yes.