TEXLOGSIEVE(1)

📦 version 2026.0, in alpine 3.24

💖 NAME 💖

texlogsieve — filter and summarize LaTeX log files. Yes bestie, that’s the whole name section, and this is the texlogsieve(1) page 💅

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

texlogsieve [OPTION]... [INPUT FILE]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

texlogsieve reads a LaTeX log file (or the standard input if no file is specified), filters out less relevant messages, and displays a summary report. It’s giving “I will read the chaos so you don’t have to” energy 💖

Important bestie warning: texlogsieve must be run from the same directory as [pdf|lua|xe]latex, because it searches for the files used during compilation (packages loaded from the current directory, files included with \input etc.). Also, since it cannot detect if LaTeX stops for user input, you should really run LaTeX in nonstopmode when texlogsieve is reading from a pipe. No cap 😭

The program goes to great lengths to correctly handle TeX line wrapping. It understands the max_print_line TeX configuration variable and reads its value from the same places as TeX. Setting max_print_line to a value larger than 9999 makes texlogsieve ignore line wrapping. Iconic behavior, honestly ✨

The defaults are reasonable; hopefully, you can just do:

[pdf|lua|xe]latex -interaction nonstopmode myfile.tex | texlogsieve

or:

texlogsieve myfile.log

and be satisfied with the result. Slay 🫶

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • --page-delay, --no-page-delay — Enable/disable grouping messages by page before display. When enabled, messages are only output after the current page is finished (shipout). The advantage is that the page number is included in the message (default enabled). Page numbers? Obsessed. 🎀
  • --summary, --no-summary — Enable/disable final summary (default enabled). The recap era 💖
  • --only-summary — No messages, show only the final summary (default disabled). Just the highlights, no lore dump. ✨
  • --shipouts, --no-shipouts — Enable/disable reporting shipouts (default disabled with page-delay, enabled with no-page-delay). Shipout girlies rise 🚢
  • --file-banner, --no-file-banner — Show/don’t show the “From file...” banner messages (default enabled, except with level DEBUG as that would be redundant and confusing). DEBUG already tells the story, bestie. 💀
  • --repetitions, --no-repetitions — Allow/prevent repeated messages (default disabled, i.e., repeated messages are suppressed). We do not need the same warning 47 times 😭
  • --be-redundant, --no-be-redundant — Present/suppress ordinary messages that will also appear in the summary. This affects messages that have special summaries (such as under/overfull boxes or undefined citations). With --no-be-redundant (the default), these messages are filtered out and only appear in the final summary. Say it once, say it cute. 💅
  • --box-detail, --no-box-detail — Include/exclude detailed information on under/overfull boxes in the final summary. With --no-box-detail, the summary presents only a list of pages and files that had under/overfull boxes (default enabled). Box receipt: available 📦
  • --ref-detail, --no-ref-detail — Include/exclude detailed information on undefined references in the final summary. With --no-ref-detail, the summary presents only a list of undefined references, without page numbers and filenames (default enabled). Undefined refs found, no doxxing the pages tho. 🔥
  • --cite-detail, --no-cite-detail — Include/exclude detailed information on undefined citations in the final summary. With --no-cite-detail, the summary presents only a list of undefined citations, without page numbers and filenames (default enabled). Citation issues but make it lowkey. 🦋
  • --summary-detail, --no-summary-detail — Toggle --box-detail, --ref-detail, and --cite-detail at once. One switch, three slays 🌈
  • --heartbeat, --no-heartbeat — Enable/disable progress gauge in page-delay mode (default enabled). Emotional support progress bar 🫶
  • --color, --no-color — Enable/disable colored output. On Windows, this will only work with an up-to-date Windows 10 or later (default disabled). Color my beloved 🎨
  • --tips, --no-tips — Enable/disable suggesting fixes for some known warnings (default enabled). Helpful queen behavior 👑
  • -l LEVEL, --minlevel=LEVEL — Filter out messages with severity level lower than LEVEL. Valid levels are DEBUG (no filtering), INFO, WARNING, CRITICAL, and UNKNOWN (default WARNING). Level up your filtering 🔍
  • -u, --unwrap-only — Do not filter messages and do not output the summary, only unwrap long, wrapped lines. The output should be very similar (but not equal) to the input file, but with wrapped lines reconstructed. This activates -l debug, --no-summary, --no-page-delay, --repetitions, --be-redundant, --shipouts, and --no-file-banner, and also suppresses the verbose “open/close file” and “shipout” messages, simulating instead the TeX format, with parens and square brackets. This is useful if you prefer the reports generated by some other tool but want to benefit from texlogsieve’s line unwrapping algorithm; the output generated by this option should be parseable by other tools (but you probably need to coerce the other tool not to try to unwrap lines). Unwrap era ✨
  • --silence-package=PKGNAME — Filter out messages that can be identified as coming from the given package. Use this option multiple times to suppress messages from several different packages. Package silenced, respectfully 🤫
  • --silence-string=EXCERPT OF UNWANTED MESSAGE — Filter out messages that contain the given string (you only need to provide part of the message text for the whole message to be suppressed). Use this option multiple times to suppress several different messages. The string should be a single line, but that is not a problem for multiline log messages: space characters in the provided string match any sequence of whitespace characters in the message, including newlines. If needed, you may precede the string with “////”, in which case you can use lua-style pattern matching (https://www.lua.org/pil/20.2.html). Quote or escape special characters such as \ for the benefit of the shell, but such quoting and escaping is unnecessary (and harmful) in the configuration file. Mute button for messages 💅
  • --silence-file=FILENAME OR FILE GLOB — Filter out messages that have been generated while the given file was being processed. Do not use absolute or relative paths, only filenames. Simple file globs, such as *.cls, work as expected. If you are only using packages you already know, silencing *.sty may be a good idea (note that this does not suppress all messages from all packages, only the messages generated while the packages are being loaded). Use this option multiple times to suppress messages from several different files. File-level mute, we love to see it. 🎀
  • --semisilence-file=FILENAME OR FILE GLOB — Just like the previous option, but non-recursive. This means that messages generated while the given file was being processed are excluded, but messages generated by some other file that was opened by it are not. For example, if chapters.tex includes (with \input) the files chapter1.tex and chapter2.tex, using --silence-file=chapters.tex will prevent messages generated by any of the three files from being displayed. If, however, you use --semisilence-file=chapters.tex, messages generated by chapters.tex will be suppressed, but messages generated by chapter1.tex or chapter2.tex will not. Boundaries, bestie 🦋
  • --add-[debug|info|warning|critical]-message=MESSAGE — Add MESSAGE to the list of messages known to the program with the given severity level; see Section UNRECOGNIZED MESSAGES below for more information about this. Like --silence-string, these should be a single line; unlike --silence-string, you need to embed \n explicitly to indicate line breaks (this is literally a backslash character followed by the letter “n”, not a linefeed character). You may precede the string with “////” to use lua-style pattern matching, but embedding \n to indicate line breaks is unavoidable. Use these options multiple times to add many different messages. Teach the program new messages ✨
  • --set-to-level-[debug|info|warning|critical]=EXCERPT OF MESSAGE — Redefine the severity level of messages that contain the provided string to the given level. Check the explanation for --silence-string, as this works in a similar way. Use these options multiple times to change the severity level of many different messages. Severity glow-up 💅
  • -c CFGFILE, --config-file=CFGFILE — Read options from the given configuration file in addition to the default config files (see the CONFIGURATION FILE section). Config file bestie 🎀
  • -v, --verbose — Print the list of configuration files read and a short summary of the most important active configuration options. Tell me everything, queen 👑
  • -h, --help — Show concise options description. Help me help you 🫶
  • --version — Print program version. Who am I? Version reveal. ✨

🦋 UNRECOGNIZED MESSAGES 🦋

texlogsieve automatically handles messages such as “Package blah Info:...” or “LaTeX Warning:...”. However, many messages do not follow this pattern. To do its thing, texlogsieve should know about these other messages beforehand. It’s not psychic, bestie 😭

While texlogsieve recognizes quite a few messages out of the box, you may run into a message generated by some package that it does not know about (you can check for this using -l unknown). If that is the case, you can use the --add-[debug|info|warning|critical]-message options to add it to the list of messages known to the program. Add it to the group chat ✅

🎀 CONFIGURATION FILE 🎀

texlogsieve always searches automatically for the (optional) texlogsieverc configuration file in $TEXINPUTS (i.e., it searches using Kpathsea). In the default configuration, the current directory is in $TEXINPUTS, so adding a config file with that name to the project directory is enough to make it work. Options in the config file are exactly the same as the long command-line options described above, but without the preceding “--” characters. Lines starting with a “#” sign are comments. Config file lore 📝

An example configuration file:

no-page-delay
# no-page-delay enables shipouts, but we do not want that
no-shipouts
silence-string = Hyperreferences in rotated content will be misplaced
# no need to escape the "\" (or any other) character
silence-string = Using \overbracket and \underbracket from `mathtools'
# silence a string using lua pattern matching
silence-string = ////luaotfload | aux : font no %d+ %(.-%)
silence-files = *.sty

If you’d like to also have a generic configuration file for all your projects (a good idea), put it at $HOME/.texlogsieverc in unix-like systems; in Windows, put it either at %LOCALAPPDATA%\texlogsieverc (C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Local) or %APPDATA%\texlogsieverc (C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data or C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming). Global config era 🌈

💀 LIMITATIONS 💀

Okay bestie, real talk: texlogsieve does not try to do anything smart about error messages. It will show a warning in the summary if one is detected — and yes, check the TIPS section of the pdf documentation about that — but if there’s an actual error, you probably want to go look directly at the log file anyway. No cap. 😭

It also cannot detect if LaTeX stops for user input, so you should really run LaTeX in nonstopmode when texlogsieve is reading from a pipe. That part matters, fr fr. 🫶

And since it needs to know what messages to expect, texlogsieve is currently geared towards LaTeX; the author has no idea how it would work with ConTeXt or plain TeX. Still, adding support to them should not be too difficult. Slay, future feature energy. ✨

👀 SEE ALSO 👀

The pdf documentation — in TeXLive, try texdoc texlogsieve — is a little more verbose than this manpage and includes a TIPS section you may find useful. It’s giving “director’s cut commentary,” honestly. 🎀

If you want to know more about the TeX log file and the workings of the program, check the initial comments in the code. iykyk 💅

🐛 BUGS AND DEVELOPMENT 🐛

Catch the repo right here:

https://gitlab.com/lago/texlogsieve

That’s the whole vibe check for bugs and development. 🦋

Copyright © 2021-2026 Nelson Lago <lago@ime.usp.br>

License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Periodt. 💜

That’s the whole page, bestie 🫶 — texlogsieve 1.6.1, January 2026, signing off ✨💅🌸

📦 where this page comes from