fromBeginning option only delivers content upon first change about node-tail

[nathankellenicki]

In which case, I'd say one should be defined either way.

For our particular use case we've written a tool to read stdout logs from a separate process to determine the current state in the process lifetime. On startup, the tool should read the current contents of the file to get the current state, and follow the log so that it can be updated with further developments. I'd argue that functionality to this is similar to what most people would expect, though without further input that's just conjecture. :)

If that's not the desired functionality, perhaps a option should be added to the constructor, "immediate: true" or the like, to determine whether it should return the existing contents immediately? Without this, one must find an alternative means to read in the current content.

In the meantime, I've made it trigger immediately like this (Somewhat hacky, but it works):

var tail = new Tail("log_filename", {
    fromBeginning: true
});

tail.on("line", function (line) {
    ...
});

tail.watchEvent.call(tail, "change");

[geogeim]

+1 i'm using @nathankunicki 's workaround for now

[vnevgen]

Created PR with potential fix of this issue @lucagrulla @nathankunicki

[lucagrulla]

You are right, the current implementation needs one change to the file to deliver the "historical" content.

Given that at this stage the specific timing of that first delivery is undefined I would say that there's no actual expected behaviour.

[lucagrulla]

Most of people will observe file updates pretty much straight after tailing the file so they will be fine.
I'll flag this as a feature request but I'm not expecting to go work on this anytime soon.

As you observed as well I can't see a clean way to eventually add it as a feature, only hacky ones.
PRs are welcome, but they have to be pretty neat solutions :-)

cheers
L.

+1

[rohit-lakhanpal]

+1

[CiscoKidxx]

+1

[colbygk]

+1. Starting delivery immediately would be the path of least surprise.

[asvetin]

+1

[suculent]

Can you merge pls?

[mojo2405]

HUGE thanks to @nathankunicki

[peterg19]

+1 Was definitely my initial expectation. Thanks for the workaround.

[psi-4ward]

any progress?

[lucagrulla]

Not yet.

[lucagrulla]

Fixed with version 2.0.0