File count rotate issue or requirement. about winston-daily-rotate-file

[kumar-b]

Hi @mattberther,

I am trying to understand the requirement. When we reach the access4.log, then we delete the first access.log and create a new access log and log the data in this file. In this way it is difficult to know which is the latest log. Because it can be any one of them.
Log4j defines rotation policy in two ways. This way there is always a consistency that access.log will be the latest log.
https://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/manual/appenders.html#RolloverStrategies

Captured some snapshots from the above link.

[mattberther]

@kumar-b would be interested in creating a rotate function (with tests) that satisfies the initial screenshot? Basically, the requirement is that access.log is always current and rotated files are in chronological order. Log4J refers to this as the "fixed window" strategy.

Once we have that, Id like to look for the best place to tie in the rotate function -- Ive done some investigation and found that rotation doesn't happen consistently either (especially when the file is buffered) and I think we'll need to do some refactoring to help with that. Isolating the rotate function in a separate class/module would help with this though.

Thoughts on the rotate api are:

function rotate(file, rotateOptions, cb) {
    this.count = rotateOptions.keep; // this comes from options.maxFiles in winston-daily-rotate-file
}

[nayimsust]

I am facing the same problem which @geforcesong mentioned. So is there any way to do that in Winton?

[marchaos]

+1 for this. It seems that the current behaviour is not what exists in most other logging frameworks. Normally I would expect the latest log file to be "access.log" rather than a log file with a number appended to it.

[mattberther]

Resolving #23 will address this issue.