A terminal user interface (TUI) for viewing and analyzing Ansible log files, built with Go and Bubbletea.

• Parse Ansible log files to extract tasks
• Display tasks in a scrollable list with their status (ok, changed, skipping, failed)
• Navigate through tasks using keyboard controls
• Expand/collapse tasks to view detailed information without changing panels
• View full raw task text in a separate details panel when a task is expanded
• Details panel height fixed to 1/3 of the screen
• Details panel width fixed to full screen width
• Raw text content in details panel wraps if lines are too long
• Details panel is scrollable with PgUp/PgDn keys
• Color-coded status indicators for quick visual identification
• Filter tasks by description, status, date, host, path, or diff content
• Debug logging of task structure to debug.log file

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd ansible-logs-view
   

2. Build the application:

   make build
   

3. Build the application linked with older glic-2.28. This would require podman installed and working on the system.

   make build-glibc-2.28

Run the application with an Ansible log file as an argument:

./ansible-logs-view /path/to/ansible-log-file.log

Or run with debug mode enabled:

./ansible-logs-view --debug /path/to/ansible-log-file.log

• ↑ / ↓ : Navigate through tasks
• Enter / Space : Expand/collapse selected task and show full raw task text in separate panel
• PgUp / PgDn : Scroll details panel when visible
• g : Go to the top of the task list
• G : Go to the bottom of the task list
• / : Toggle filter input
• q / Ctrl+C : Quit the application

1. Press / to open the filter input
2. Type your search term (any part of task description, status, date, host, path, or diff content)
3. Press Enter to apply the filter
4. Press Esc to cancel filtering and restore all tasks

1. Navigate to a task using arrow keys
2. Press Enter or Space to expand the selected task
3. View full raw task text in the separate details panel at the bottom (fixed to 1/3 of screen height)
4. Use PgUp/PgDn to scroll through long content in the details panel
5. Press Enter or Space again to collapse the task and hide details panel

The application now creates a debug.log file that contains detailed information about each parsed task, including:

• Task ID
• Description
• Status
• Host
• Path
• Start time
• Diff information
• First 1000 characters of RawText

To enable debug logging, run the application with the --debug flag:

./ansible-logs-view --debug /path/to/ansible-log-file.log

• Go 1.25.3+
• Bubbletea v1.3.10
• Bubbles v0.21.0

ansible-logs-view/
├── go.mod
├── go.sum
├── cmd/
│   ├── ansible-logs-view/
│   │   ├── main.go              # Application entry point
│   │   └── ...
│   └── tui-poc/
│       ├── itemreader.go
│       └── main.go              # Proof of concept TUI (not the main app)
├── internal/
│   └── app/
│       ├── logger.go            # Logging setup
│       ├── parser_test.go       # Parser tests
│       ├── parser.go            # Log file parsing logic
│       ├── task.go              # Task data structure
│       └── tui.go               # Terminal user interface implementation
└── testdata/
    ├── sample.log
    └── testitems.txt

To build the application:

go build -o ansible-logs-view ./cmd/ansible-logs-view

You can build the tool for an older RHEL/OL/Rockylinux with glibc-2.28 using ./build-glibc-2.28.sh. To run this script you need podman. It will download a rockylinux:8 image, build the tool there, spin a container pull the compiled binary to your host machine.

To run tests:

go test ./...

• Parses Ansible log files to extract individual tasks
• Extracts task metadata including:
  • Task ID
  • Description
  • Start time
  • Status (ok, changed, skipping, failed)
  • Host
  • Path
  • Diff information
  • Raw task text from the log file
• Debug logging: Creates debug.log file with detailed information about each parsed task

• Defines the Task struct to represent parsed tasks
• Contains all relevant task information for display including diff data and raw task text

• Centralized logging implementation for debug output
• Manages debug log file creation and writing
• Thread-safe logger initialization

• Implements a scrollable list view with viewport-based scrolling
• Provides dual-panel display:
  • Task List Panel: Shows all tasks in a scrollable list with color-coded status indicators
  • Details Panel: Displays full raw task text for expanded tasks
• Details panel properties:
  • Fixed height to 1/3 of the screen
  • Fixed width to full screen width
  • Content wraps if lines are too long
  • Scrollable with PgUp/PgDn keys
• Provides intuitive keyboard navigation:
  • Arrow keys for navigation
  • Enter/Space to expand/collapse tasks and show full raw task text in separate panel
  • PgUp/PgDn to scroll details panel when visible
  • g/G for top/bottom navigation
  • / for filtering tasks
  • Q/Ctrl+C to quit
• Filtering capability to search tasks by description, status, date, host, path, or diff content
• Color-coded status indicators for quick visual identification

• Handles command-line argument parsing
• Initializes the parser and TUI components
• Manages the application lifecycle
• Supports a --debug flag to enable debug logging

• Contains integration-style tests for the parser
• Verifies that the parser correctly extracts task information
• Tests against sample log files to ensure correctness

Through careful analysis of the Ansible log file, the following patterns were identified:

• Tasks begin with TASK [description] ***** headers
• Each task contains metadata including timestamps and paths
• Task execution status is indicated by lines like ok:, changed:, skipping:, or failed:
• Timestamps follow the format: DayOfWeek Day Month Year HH:MM:SS
• Diff information appears in sections starting with --- before:
• Tasks with changes include detailed diff output showing before/after comparisons

• Color Coding: Different status types are visually distinguished with appropriate colors:
  • Green for successful tasks (ok)
  • Orange for tasks that made changes (changed)
  • Gray for skipped tasks (skipping)
  • Red for failed tasks (failed)
• Responsive Layout: The interface adapts to terminal window size changes
• Clear Navigation: Intuitive keyboard controls with visual feedback
• Dual-Panel Display: Task list and raw task text shown simultaneously
• Viewport Scrolling: Efficient handling of large numbers of tasks
• Search/Filter: Quick access to specific tasks by keyword

• Quick Analysis: Rapidly identify which tasks executed successfully, changed systems, or failed
• Change Tracking: Easily see exactly what files were modified by each task
• Troubleshooting: Quickly pinpoint problematic tasks and understand their impact
• Task Filtering: Find specific tasks by description, status, date, or other criteria

• Deployment Verification: Confirm that deployments executed as expected
• Audit Trail: Maintain a clear record of system changes
• Issue Resolution: Speed up debugging by focusing on specific task changes

• Learning Tool: Understand how Ansible tasks affect system state
• Code Review: Examine the actual changes made by deployment scripts
• Documentation: Use the tool to document deployment behaviors

Contributions are welcome! Please feel free to submit a Pull Request.

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.