Advanced configuration

revd script is used to either compile individual groups of files or to compile from a revdebug.json configuration file that can be present in the topmost directory of the project. revdebug.json can contain only options, options, and files for the project or multiple hierarchical subprojects with their own options each of which can be instrumented individually. Command line configuration options can override options in revdebug.json if you wish to build a subproject with different options than are specified in revdebug.json.

revd manages the source files you are instrumenting by copying the clean originals to a parallel directory tree under revdsrc/ at the top-level directory of the project and replacing the original files with instrumented versions. This is done so that the original project does not have to be aware of or changed for RevDeBug.

The top-level directory for the project is considered to be the first at or above the current level which contains a package.json or revdebug.json file. All operations are executed with respect to this directory, even if you run revd in a subdirectory.

For example, the following will instrument all the Javascript files in the current directory:

revd *.js

For all Javascript files in all subdirectories as well:

revd "**/*.js"

Note: The quotes are needed to prevent the shell from expanding the wildcards incorrectly on its own. Use quotes around wildcards whenever there is doubt.

If the previous commands are not run in the top project directory then an appropriate path configuration value will be set to make sure the compilation is relative to the top.

If project files are defined in revdebug.json then the project can be instrumented by doing: revd

And if multiple projects or subprojects are defined then they may be instrumented as follows:

revd .project1 

Or for a subproject of .project1:

revd .project1.subproject1

Project names always start with a dot character and the alias for the top-level project is just a dot.

Compiler

In addition to being able to specify all project options on the command line, there are options that can only be passed on the command line in order to tell the compiler what to do or to control behavior, they are:

Actions:
--help	Print help info. (short: -h)
--version	Print the version. (short: -v)
--post	Do source map postprocessing after any tools farther down the chain have been run (typescript, webpack, etc...).
--clean	Restore original uninstrumented source files for given config or specified directly.
--remove	Restore ALL original source files in managed source directory and remove directory.
--dump	Dump processed configuration which would be used (don't actually do anything).
Behavior:
--arg ARG=VAL	Add argument for substitution in revdebug.json, "\${ARG}" will be replaced with "VAL". (short: -a)
-force	Force certain actions even if errors would otherwise prevent it. (short: -f)
--skip	Skip certain actions. (short: -s)
-j NUM	Maximum number of threads to use, Node 12+. (default: all logical CPUs)
--verbose	Show all error messages with stack traces. (short: --verb)
--chost ADDR	Compile-time record server override address to send metadata. (default: from --host or config)
--cport PORT	Compile-time record server override port to send metadata. (default: from --port or config)

revdebug.json file structure

The structure of the revdebug.json configuration file may be as follows (please note the names "option1", "option2" etc... used are just placeholders for the actual option names listed farther down):

{
    "option1": option1,
    "option2": option2,
     ...
}

This is for a simple configuration that only specifies options, files would be specified on the command line. For a configuration that specifies what files to instrument:

{
    "option1": option1,
    "option2": option2,
     ...
    "files": "files" or ["files", "more files", ...]
}

You can even specify multiple hierarchical nested projects with their own options as:

{
    "option1": option1, top-level options (inherited by subprojects),
    "option2": option2,
     ...
    ".project1": {
        "option1": option1, options here override parent
        "option2": option2,
        ...
        "files": "files" or ["files", "more files", ...]
    },
    ".project2": {
        "option1": option1, options here override parent
        "option2": option2,
        ...
        ".subproject1": {
            "option1": option1, options here override parent
            "option2": option2,
            ...
            "files": "files" or ["files", "more files", ...]
        },
        ".subproject2": {
            "option1": option1, options here override parent
            "option2": option2,
            ...
            "files": "files" or ["files", "more files", ...]
        }
    }
}

List of options

The actual options are as follows:

Information:
Network:
host	The hostname or IP address as a string of the record server.
port	The port of the record server, this must be a number.
webPort	The port of the record server for web projects, this must be a number. A value of 0 indicates that the appropriate port 80 or 443 be used according to the secure status.
secure	Use secure connections.
connectTimeout	Timeout for connection attempt in milliseconds.
reconnectWait	Amount of time to wait before attempting reconnect after disconnect or failed connect in milliseconds.
Project:
solution	Solution name. If package.json is present this comes from the name field.
application	Application name. If package.json is present this comes from the main field.
version	The version string. If package.json is present this comes from the version field.
release	The release string, normally git commit hash (retrieved automatically if not provided).
authToken	RevDeBug authorization token.
Application Performance Monitoring:
apm	Enable or disable Application Performance Monitoring for project, can be true or false, default is false.
apmHost	Hostname of APM OAP server if different from record server host, the default is same as host. ("node" target only, ignored for "web")
apmPort	Port of APM OAP server, the default is 11800. ("node" target only, ignored for "web")
excludeIn	Single or list of HTTP status codes to exclude from generating error recordings on incoming requests. Since normally only codes between 400 and 599 generate error traces, it only really makes sense to exclude codes in this range. Status code 0 is a special code which represents errors which can not be determined at the time of filtering. This may represent a 500 internal server error or some other kind of error where the code was not available. For this reason this code was left apart to leave more granular control.
excludeOut	Single or list of HTTP status codes to exclude from generating error recordings on outgoing requests.
sw_agent_name	Agent service name.
sw_agent_disable_plugins	Comma separated list of modules for which to disable APM.
sw_agent_max_buffer_size	Rough maximum number of spans per second limiter, anything over this is not reported.
sw_cold_endpoint	When a cold start is detected append "" to the endpoint name.
sw_trace_ignore_path	Comma separated list of wildcard endpoint names to exclude from recording.
sw_ignore_suffix	Comma separated list of endpoint suffixes to exclude from APM recording, the default is ".jpg,.jpeg,.js,.css,.png,.bmp,.gif,.ico,.mp3,.mp4,.html,.svg".
sw_http_ignore_method	Comma-delimited list of http metods to ignore (GET, POST, HEAD, OPTIONS, etc...).
Node APM:
sw_sql_trace_parameters	Record potentially large sql parameters to queries, can be true or false, default is false.
sw_sql_parameters_max_length	Maximum string length of sql parameters string to send.
sw_mongo_trace_parameters	Record potentially large mongodb parameters to queries, can be true or false, default is false.
sw_mongo_parameters_max_length	Maximum string length of mongodb parameters string to send.
Browser APM:	("web" target only, ignored for "node")
entrySpan	Determines whether page open events should be registered as a separate trace segment. Default value is multi. Can be set to: none - traces won’t include page open events and will start from requests made to the backend, single - a single browser entry span and all exit spans are children of this, which can be a long period of time if the person spends a long time on the page, multi - a new "/" entry span for each outgoing exit span, regardless if it is from the same non-reloaded page, split - same as "multi" except that it is done in a way that the outgoing exit span also appears on the left side in the trace view. Otherwise it is hidden and part of the entry span and not searchable.
useFmp	Collect FMP (first meaningful paint) data of the first screen, can be true or false, default is false.
enableSPA	Monitor the page hashchange event and report PV, which is suitable for single page application scenarios, can be true or false, default is false.
autoTracePerf	Support sending of performance data automatically, can be true or false, default is true.
jsErrors	Javascript error monitoring, can be true or false, default is true.
apiErrors	API error monitoring, can be true or false, default is true.
resourceErrors	Resource error monitoring, can be true or false, default is true.
vueErrors	Vue error monitoring, otherwise will be reported as js error if that is enabled. Can be true or false, default is false. To clarify, this does not "turn on" error reporting from Vue, that is always on, it will simply log those errors as "Vue" as opposed to "JS".
Browser screen recording:	("web" target only, ignored for "node")
screen	Enable or disable screen recording, can be true or false, default is false.
screenTime	Minimum number of seconds of screen recording for crash reports.
Compile:
target	The type of application you are instrumenting, node,webor azure.The default is node if package.json is present and has a main field, otherwise it is web. For use with Azure Functions (serverless) use azure.
framework
type	How to parse .js and .jsx files, can be commonjs or module. If package.json is present this comes from the type field. All .mjs, .ts and .tsx" files are always parsed as module and all .cjs files are parsed as commonjs regardless of this setting.
runtime	How the RevDeBug runtime is incorporated into the project, can be inject, local or global. The default is global, see below for details.
instrument	The default instrumentation setting for the project. Normally a whole project will be instrumented except for any functions which may opt out (for performance reasons or whatever). This option allows you to start with instrumentation turned off globally and allow only certain functions or methods to opt-in to being recorded. The possible options are on, err or off, these are explained in more detail in the section on errors.
excludeInst	Blacklist of lexical function name calls to exclude from instrumentation because they have a special meaning to a tool farther down the chain, e.g. "require.context". Filename style * and ** wildcards are accepted so "a.*" matches "a.b" and "a.c" but not "a.b.c", while "a.**" matches all the previous. The matching is exact with the source, not syntactically cleaned up by parsing (comments will affect it, but spaces are stripped). This is a string or an array of strings.
functionCode	Include original uninstrumented function source code to return when a function .toString() is called. true or false, default is true for node projects and false for web. This is intended to allow things like MongoDB mapReduce to work properly when it is passed actual functions. It is off by default for web projects but can be turned on, in which case it is up to the user to make sure the source information survives any minification or mangling processing.
legacyDecorators	Babel legacy decorator parse mode. Use this if you are using decorators on function parameters (like in Angular for example). true or false, default is false.
jsx	Specifies whether JSX parsing is to be used for ALL files or only .jsx and .tsx, except for .ts which is never parsed with JSX grammar. true or false, default is true.
ts	Specifies whether Typescript parsing is to be used for ALL files instead of only .ts and .tsx files, true or false, default is false.
Runtime:
mode	The record mode you want this project to start in, options are onevent or off. When in off nothing will be recorded even if an unhandled exception occurs. A project that is set to off can not be set to onevent through the use of the RevDeBug API. Though this setting can be overridden through the use of environment variables, see below for details.
logging	Console logging level, options are "critical", "error", "warn", "info" or "debug".
logTime	Log timestamps or not.
mutable	Normally mutable objects and arrays are stringified for serialization at the point of record. That can be slow so this option allows you to defer stringification to the point of a crash block send (at which point the object contents may have changed), or turn it off altogether. The default normal stringification is full, deferred is dirty and to turn off specify none. See below for details.
recordings	Maximum concurrent number of snapshots and exception recordings backlog for send, excess will be dropped, 0 = no limit.
recordingProb	The probability (ranging from 0.0 to 1.0) of sending a recording for statistical throttling is set to a default value of 1 (always).
ignoreError	Comma separated list of Error names not to send recordings for, including non-Error to specify thrown objects which do not derive from the Error class. The error names are checked respecting class hierarchy so that ignoring a base error class will ignore all derived error classes. For an extreme example, ignoring Error also ignores ReferenceError, TypeError, etc... Currently this is only honored for the APM span where the error occurs. If an error is ignored, no indication is propagated back upstream to store recordings of their own (which normally would be), but if the resulting returned status indicates an error (for example http status code 400+) the upstream component may store a recording anyway due to the general error status.
backlog	Desired maximum length of crash recordings or snapshots.
blocks	Enable code isolation blocks for asynchronous code allowing only a certain branch to be recorded irrespective of any other async code being executed in parallel. Only works for node projects as browsers don't have a way to track async context yet.
symbols	Whether to show Symbol keys in properties or not, true or false, default is false.
classProps	Whether to show properties of non-Object objects like class instances. By default this is true and they are shown with their properties listed like a standard object following the class name. If this is false then these will be shown instead with the class name followed by a unique integer ID for each new instance (this is faster). true or false, default is true.
functionProps	Whether to show properties of functions, true or false, default is false.
stdObjects	Whether to show details of some standard Javascript objects like Date, Set, Map, ArrayBuffer, SharedArrayBuffer and DataView. true or false, default is true.
typedArrays	Whether to show details of typed arrays or just the length. true or false, default is true.
objectIds	Assign and show globally unique object numeric identifiers on objects which are not Object.preventExtensions(). This is intended to allow differentiation between two otherwise identical objects which evaluate unequal, e.g. "{a: 1} !== {a: 1}". true or false, default is false.
depth	Maximum recursion depth for object stringification, has same meaning as "console.dir(obj, {depth: value})". Default is 1 which is 1 less than "console.log()", so "{name: {name: [Object]}}".
strLen	The maximum(ish) length for stringification of objects or arrays, this value is not strictly obeyed but rather serves as a guide. An actual object stringification may even get to about 2x this length in extreme circumstances. This must be a number.
Files / Paths:	* Note: These are not inherited from parent or are inherited with path append.
path	This allows you to specify a common path prefix for any files or excludes you specify for the current project or subproject. This value will also be excluded from any web project exception localization filename matching. Paths are inherited from parent projects and this path is joined with and treated as a subpath of the parent.
files	This is where you specify the files to be instrumented for this project. If a project has files then it is a full project and not just a bunch of options for command line compiling or subprojects. This can be specifed as either a string or an array of strings, and each one is treated as a wildcard match specifier and all files in the current path which match are included in the project. All files of all subprojects of this project are also automatically excluded from this project.
exclude	This is specified the same as files but is a list of files which are explicitly to be excluded from this project. Like files this is also a string or an array of strings.
main	If the runtime type is inject then this must be a single file where the RevDeBug runtime code is injected. If the project contains only one source filename then this option does not need to be present and that single source file will be assumed main.
index	For a web runtime type inject or global this specifies the name of the index HTML-ish file to be modified for the inclusion of the RevDeBug script. For a global project a <script src="__revdebug.js"> tag is inserted into the file whereas for an inject project the full RevDeBug runtime is inlined. For a global project this this is optional, if not specified then you are responsible for loading the RevDeBug runtime script somewhere yourself. This file is always relative to the root path of the project irrespective of path. Also for a global project, if a runtimePath is not explicitly specified then the directory where this index file is located becomes the runtimePath where the RevDeBug runtime is copied.
postPath	Path to the final output of the toolchain for postprocessing. Serves the same purpose for postFiles as path does for files.
postFiles	Wildcard specifiers of final output files for postprocessing.
runtimeWeb	For a web global project, read the revdebug.js script from RevDeBug servers instead of copying it locally to load from local site.
runtimePath	For a web global or local or a node local project, this will override the default location where the RevDeBug runtime is copied. This path is always relative to the root path of the project irrespective of path.
runtimePrefix	This is a string which is not transformed in any way that is inserted right before the RevDeBug runtime name in any node or web import statement or web index script "src" tag. This allows for setting a different URL source for the RevDeBug runtime script (such as a "cdn/js" directory). For local imports, with judicious use of the runtimePath option, this allows for relocating the runtime to a location other than at the top of a project.
runtimeCopy	Special case field which allows you to suppress copying the RevDeBug runtime to a directory where the compiler thinks it should go. Intended for configurations where you will be loading the runtime from a custom location. true or false, default is true.
excludeSys	Global wildcard specifiers of files and directories to completely exclude from all processing in all subprojects. (e.g. "**/node_modules/**").

All these options can be specified on the command line to override any options in the revdebug.json file, so for example to set host on the command line specify --host address. Options that are boolean such as --apm or --sourceMap can be specified on the command line as such to indicate true or --noapm and --nosourceMap to indicate false, --apm=true and --apm=false are also accepted.