##### Get Chainsaw

- Download
- Changes
- License
- Important Distribution Notes

##### About Chainsaw

- Introduction
- Quick Tour
- Zeroconf
- Roadmap
- JavaDoc

##### Community

- Mailing Lists
- Issue Tracking

##### Development

- Repository
- Cross Reference
- Dependencies
- Duplication
- PMD

##### Apache

- Home
- Sponsorship
- Thanks
- Security
- Conferences

## Introduction

Welcome to the home of Apache Chainsaw™ v2!

Chainsaw v2 is a companion application to Log4j written by members of the Log4j development community. Like a number of Open Source projects, this new version was built upon inspirations, ideas and creations of others. Chainsaw v2 has it's roots from the original Chainsaw utility written by Oliver Burn, and with inspiration from the Log Factor 5 utility contributed by ThoughtWorks Inc.

## Available Distributions

- Standalone -.sh/.bat
- OS X 'native' distribution (uses Java still, but looks like a real OSX application)

Web Start support will be re-added in an upcoming release

Click Download link for more information.

## So what is it really?

It's a GUI-based Log viewer. A picture tells a thousand words...

These screen shots were taken on Mac OS High Sierra.

Rather than rely on a combination of tail/grep/vi or equivalent to view/query/trace-through a huge trail of logging events, you can use Chainsaw.

Chainsaw can read local and ssh-reachable regular text log files, as well as log files formatted in Log4j's XMLLayout. Chainsaw can also receive events over TCP and UDP, read events from a DB, and can process events generated by java.util.logging.

## Tutorial and User Manual

Chainsaw already includes help with with a Quick Reference and a Tutorial to get you started, all viewable from within the GUI!

## Alternatives

- OtrosLogViewer is supporting different log formats (log4j, log4j2, logback, JUL) with pluginable architecture and Intellij/Eclispe integration.
- Lilith is a Logging and AccessEvent viewer for Log4j, Logback, and java.util.logging
- eclipse logviewer is Eclipse Plug-in for tailing log files and eclipse consoles.