NAnt - Loggers & Listeners

Overview

NAnt has two related features to allow the build process to be monitored: listeners and loggers.

Listeners

A listener is alerted of the following events:

build started

build finished

target started

target finished

task started

task finished

message logged

Loggers

Loggers extend the capabilities of listeners and add the following features:

Receives a handle to the standard output and error print streams and therefore can log information to the console or the -logfile specified file.

Logging level (-quiet, -verbose, -debug) aware.

Emacs-mode aware. This still needs to be implemented.

Built-in Listeners/Loggers

Class	Description	Type
NAnt.Core.DefaultLogger	The logger used implicitly unless overridden with the `-logger` command-line switch.	IBuildLogger
NAnt.Core.MailLogger	Extends DefaultLogger such that output is still generated the same, and when the build is finished an e-mail can be sent.	IBuildLogger
NAnt.Core.XmlLogger	Generates output in XML format.	IBuildLogger

Simply run NAnt normally, or:

NAnt.exe -logger:NAnt.Core.DefaultLogger

The MailLogger captures all output logged through DefaultLogger (standard NAnt output) and will send success and failure messages to unique e-mail lists, with control for turning off success or failure messages individually.

Properties controlling the operation of MailLogger are:

Property	Description	Required
MailLogger.mailhost	The mail server to use.	No, default is "localhost"
MailLogger.from	The address of the e-mail sender.	Yes, if mail needs to be sent.
MailLogger.failure.notify	Send build failure e-mails ?	No, default is "true".
MailLogger.success.notify	Send build success e-mails ?	No, default is "true".
MailLogger.failure.to	The address to send build failure messages to.	Yes, if failure mail is to be sent.
MailLogger.success.to	The address to send build success messages to.	Yes, if success mail is to be sent.
MailLogger.failure.subject	The subject of build failure messages.	No, default is "Build Failure".
MailLogger.success.subject	The subject of build success messages.	No, default is "Build Success".

Usage:

NAnt.exe -logger:NAnt.Core.MailLogger

Writes all build information out to an XML file named log.xml, or the value of the XmlLogger.file property if present, when used as a listener. When used as a logger, it writes all output to either the console or to the value of -logfile.

Whether used as a listener or logger, the output is not generated until the build is complete.

Usage:

NAnt.exe -listener:NAnt.Core.XmlLogger
NAnt.exe -logger:NAnt.Core.XmlLogger -logfile:buildlog.xml