tailit

Tailit is a cross-platform, open-source command-line utility for real-time log monitoring and data streaming. It provides enhanced tailing capabilities beyond the standard tail command, including multi-file watching, line filtering, transformation, and structured output suitable for consumption by other tools. The project is community-maintained and emphasizes simplicity, low resource usage, and resilience to log rotation.

Key features include real-time tailing with automatic re-opening after log rotation, support for watching multiple files or directories, filter expressions to include or exclude lines, and lightweight processors for transforming lines into JSON, CSV, or other formats. Tailit supports pluggable processors and a configuration file, enabling users to compose pipelines without scripting. It aims for deterministic buffering and predictable end-to-end latency, making it appropriate for alerting and monitoring workflows.

In practice, tailit is used to monitor application logs, system logs, and custom data streams, frequently in containerized environments where logs are collected by log shippers. The tool interoperates with standard Unix utilities and can redirect output into log aggregation systems or dashboards. It also strives to preserve compatibility with existing workflows by offering a familiar command-line interface with options analogous to common tail utilities.

See also: tail, tail -f, grep, awk, log monitoring, streaming data.