I have a lot of print statements printing the status of various things for debugging purposes in my game, like “Getting inventory for <user_id>”, “Inventory successfully copied to <user_id>”. This isn’t a problem in studio, but I was just wondering,
In a live server that might persist for tens of thousands of players entering/leaving, the console will gradually build up tens of thousands of these statements. I was wondering if old print statements are periodically cleaned up from the console and the server’s memory
It might seem like any strings from the print statements saved to the server’s memory may have an negligible impact on the memory usage, but if (hypothetically) 1M printed strings of 100 chars each are stored on the console, that adds up 100MB of memory usage. Still, it would take a pretty long time to get to this many messages, but I was wondering if I should just comment out all the prints in the live game
prints are sometimes used for debugging, you could remove them afterwards when you are done with the game in studio so minimal prints/warns get over on live game.
you could comment those all out so you don’t show prints in game
Memory Usage: As you mentioned, a large number of print statements can consume significant memory over time. While modern servers have ample resources, it’s still a good practice to avoid unnecessary memory usage.
Performance Impact: Frequent print statements can also impact performance, especially if they are executed in high-frequency loops or critical sections of your code.
Log Management: Logs are crucial for debugging, but in a live environment, you need a more efficient and manageable way to handle them.
Best Practices
Conditional Debugging:
Use a conditional flag to enable or disable print statements based on the environment (development vs. production).
local isDebugMode = false -- Set to true in development, false in production
if isDebugMode then
print("Getting inventory for", user_id)
end
Logging Library:
Implement or use a logging library that can handle different levels of logging (info, warning, error) and can be configured to log only certain levels in production.
local Logger = {
isDebugMode = false,
log = function(level, message)
if Logger.isDebugMode or level == "error" then
print("[" .. level:upper() .. "] " .. message)
end
end,
info = function(message) Logger.log("info", message) end,
warn = function(message) Logger.log("warn", message) end,
error = function(message) Logger.log("error", message) end,
}
-- Usage
Logger.info("Getting inventory for " .. user_id)
Logger.error("Failed to get inventory for " .. user_id)
External Logging Services:
Use external logging services like Sentry, Loggly, or integrate with your own remote logging system. These services can store logs, provide search functionality, and offer alerts for critical issues.
Log Rotation:
Implement log rotation to periodically clean up old logs, ensuring that they do not consume too much memory or disk space. This is more relevant for server-side logs.
Environment Checks:
Make sure to check the environment your game is running in and only output detailed logs in development or staging environments.
Example Implementation
Here’s an example of how you might implement conditional logging in your Roblox game:
local isDebugMode = false -- Set this based on the environment
local function log(message)
if isDebugMode then
print(message)
end
end
-- Example usage
local user_id = 123456
log("Getting inventory for " .. user_id)
-- Your game logic here
log("Inventory successfully copied to " .. user_id)