Fire-and-forget logging mode

[teh-cmc]

It is pretty common to want to log data in a fire-and-forget kind of way, e.g. drop data if there is no viewer listening in when using connect().

Surprisingly (to me, at least?), we do not seem to offer any way of doing this at the moment. Data always gets buffered either a the RecordingStream layer or in one the Sinks, there's just no way to drop it.

[rgolovanov]

@teh-cmc could you clarify a bit the problem? when does it occur?

According to API documentation:

        /// flush_timeout_sec:
        /// The minimum time the SDK will wait during a flush before potentially
        /// dropping data if progress is not being made. Passing a negative value indicates no
        /// timeout, and can cause a call to `flush` to block indefinitely.
        ///
        /// This function returns immediately.
        Error connect(std::string_view tcp_addr = "127.0.0.1:9876", float flush_timeout_sec = 2.0)
            const;

the flush_timeout_sec should handle problems with connect and drop all accumulated buffer if the viewer wasn't connected within specified time limit.

[teh-cmc]

flush_timeout_sec = 0 should indeed work, but it simply didn't the last time I tried it.

Either there's a bug in its implementation, or there is something else entirely that is also buffering data.

[DevonMorris]

Any updates on when you think this will land? We still periodically struggle with this