mtail is implemented in Go.
You will need to install a recent Go.
Fetch, build, and install the binary directly with go get
go install github.com/google/mtail/cmd/mtail
If you do it this way, you won't have a supported version of mtail.
Clone the source from GitHub into your $GOPATH. If you don't have a $GOPATH, see the next section.
GO111MODULE=on go get -u github.com/google/mtail
cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/google/mtail
make install
An excellent starting guide for people new to Go entirely is here: https://github.com/alco/gostart
If you want to skip the guide, these two references are short but to the point
on setting up the $GOPATH workspace:
- https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/SettingGOPATH
- https://github.com/golang/go/wiki/GOPATH#repository-integration-and-creating-go-gettable-projects
Finally, https://golang.org/doc/code.html is the original Go project documentation for the philosophy on Go workspaces.
Put export GOPATH=$HOME/go in your ~/.profile.
export GOPATH=$HOME/go
mkdir -p $GOPATH/src
then back up to the The "Right Way" above.
Unlike the recommendation for Go projects, mtail uses a Makefile to build the source. This ensures the generated code is up to date and that the binary is tagged with release information.
(You dont have to use the Makefile and can try go install github.com/google/mtail/cmd/mtail directly, but if you have problems you'll be asked for the release information.)
Having fetched the source, use make from the top of the source tree. This will install all the dependencies, and then build mtail. This assumes that your Go environment is already set up -- see above for hints on setting it up.
The resulting binary will be in $GOPATH/bin.
The unit tests can be run with make test, which invokes go test. The slower race-detector tests can be run with make testrace.
The Makefile has a crossbuild target for building on different platforms. By default it builds for a few amd64 targets:
% make crossbuild
mkdir -p build
gox --output="./build/mtail_v3.0.0-rc10_{{.OS}}_{{.Arch}}" -osarch="linux/amd64 windows/amd64 darwin/amd64" -ldflags "-X main.Version=v3.0.0-rc10-72-gcbea8a8 -X main.Revision=cbea8a810942be1129d58c37b27a55987a384776"
Number of parallel builds: 3
--> linux/amd64: github.com/google/mtail
--> darwin/amd64: github.com/google/mtail
--> windows/amd64: github.com/google/mtail
but you can override it with the environment variable GOX_OSARCH like so:
% make GOX_OSARCX=linux/arm crossbuild
mkdir -p build
gox --output="./build/mtail_v3.0.0-rc10_{{.OS}}_{{.Arch}}" -osarch="linux/amd64 windows/amd64 darwin/amd64" -ldflags "-X main.Version=v3.0.0-rc10-72-gcbea8a8 -X main.Revision=cbea8a810942be1129d58c37b27a55987a384776"
Number of parallel builds: 3
--> darwin/amd64: github.com/google/mtail
--> windows/amd64: github.com/google/mtail
--> linux/amd64: github.com/google/mtail
You can still run mtail and its programs programs with Docker.
docker build -t mtail .
docker run -it --rm mtail --help
mtail is not much use without a configuration file or logs to parse, you will need to mount a path containing them into the container, like so:
docker run -it --rm -v examples/linecount.mtail:/progs/linecount.mtail -v /var/log:/logs mtail -logtostderr -one_shot -progs /progs/linecount.mtail -logs /logs/messages.log
Or, via Docker Compose, e.g. this docker-compose.yml snippet example:
service:
mtail:
image: mtail
command:
- -logtostderr
- -one_shot
- -progs
- /progs/linecount.mtail
- -logs
- /logs/messages.log
volume:
- type: bind
source: /var/log
target: /logs
readonly: true
- type: bind
source: examples/linecount.mtail
target: /progs/linecount.mtailPlease use gofmt to format your code before committing. Emacs' go-mode has a lovely gofmt-before-save function.
If make gives you the following error:
../github.com/google/mtail/vm/lexer.go:28: too many errors
Then run make in that dependency and run make again like so:
cd ../github.com/google/mtail
make
cd -
make