HowTo: Tail Files in Eclipse IDE

Eclipse, Tools, Windows

Unix ‘tail’ command is used to display the last few lines of a file. The ‘-f’ parameter makes the utility more useful in the sense that it allows you to ‘follow’ the output of the file.

As and when additional lines are added to the file, they are displayed on the terminal. The follow parameter ‘-f’ is very useful in monitoring the log files.

Tail For Win32 is a MFC based tool to accomplish the ‘tail’ functionality on Windows. The program is written in C++ using MFC, and uses Win32 file change notifications to monitor when a file changes.

Eclipse IDE in recent years has gained immense popularity and has become the default development environment for a lot of programming languages.

Monitoring log files from within Eclipse would be a nice add-on. The LogWatcher plugin helps you to do just that. It adds a view via which you can monitor a log file/file for changes.

Using LogWatcher plugin you can :

  • Watch any file inside Eclipse.
  • Customize number of lines to show from each file and refresh interval.
  • Tabbed view for easy access to multiple files.
  • Filters allow actions to be taken when logging output matches certain patterns.

For detailed instructions on using the plugin, refer to the LogWatcher manual.

Download LogWatcher Plugin for Eclipse

P.S. Also you want want to Install Eclipse plugin’s easily using “Links”.

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  • jwb Mar 25, 2009 Link

    The definitive Eclipse plugin for monitoring logs is NTail Eclipse plugin for tailing and monitoriing log files” which was released as 1.0 at the beginning of 2009. Graysky seems to have left their plugin alone for the last 4 years.

  • Shmimpie Jun 27, 2010 Link

    Agreed jwb.

    Logwatcher has bugs and there has been no development for a really long time.

    For example, in Logwatcher scroll lock stops working for no reason (latest Eclipse). The only way to get it to start working again is to remove the view from your workbench, re-add it and re-configure it. Then it will work properly (for a while). I’m sick of it, so I’ve come here looking for an alternative. Hope NTail works!!