allow to tail multiple files at the same time (support for * wildcard)

[jovial-snyder]

One of the most common use cases for tail is something like tail -f /var/log/*.log. It would make sense if tailspin would also support this feature. I am on Ubuntu 24.04 and because of this, I am currently using an older version of tailspin (2.0.0), so this feature might have been added already in newer version (I didn't see anything in the changelog, though)

[bensadeh]

Hi @jovial-snyder !

tailspin is composable with other unix commands, so in your case you have two options using your own example:

tail -f /var/log/*.log | tspin

Running this command will give exactly the same output as the tail -f command.

However, often when I read the logs, I find that I would like to read it in a pager where I can scrollback and stop / resume tailing. To read the same output in the pager less, run this command:

tspin --exec='tail -f /var/log/*.log'

Is this what you had in mind? For some context: tailspin used to do this natively where you could watch a folder, but I've since moved away from this to only focus on highlighting. This let tailspin be more in line with the unix philosophy of doing one thing and doing it well (i.e. highlighting).

[jovial-snyder]

Thank you, this does exactly what I was looking for