Custom Event Logger for .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0

I needed to write a .Net 3.5 Event logger for a custom lib I am coding for a client. After scouring the internet, there were a lot of antiquated code samples. I even found a lot of modern samples on MSDN, but was surprised to see very poor code (having a .close() not within a using() or finally())

I decided to write a custom Event logger class with the following simple functionality, since the primary use was to report events or errors.

• Have a write() event that would log a custom error to the event log (found in the System logs)
• Would write to a text file in the event the Event did not get logged. I found this step necessary since the calling program may not have Event log access due to security.

Here is the Class:

class CustomEventLog
    {
        const string sourceName = "Your custom event name here";
        const string logType = "System";
        const string customTextLog = "c:\\CustomEventLog.log";

        public static void Write(string message, EventLogEntryType type)
        {
            try
            {
                //See if the source exists. 
                if (!(EventLog.SourceExists(sourceName, System.Environment.MachineName)))
                {
                    System.Diagnostics.EventLog.CreateEventSource(new EventSourceCreationData(sourceName, logType));
                }

                using (EventLog ev = new EventLog(logType, System.Environment.MachineName, sourceName))
                {
                    ev.WriteEntry(message, type, 10001);
                    Console.WriteLine(message);
                    ev.Close();
                }
            }
            catch (Exception ex)
            {
                // If all else fails write to disk
                using (StreamWriter sw = new StreamWriter(customTextLog, true))
                {
                    sw.WriteLine(ex.ToString());
                    if (message != null)
                    {
                        sw.WriteLine(message);
                    }
                    sw.Close();
                }
            }
        }
    }

Here is also sample usage:

CustomEventLog.Write("This is an informational comment.", EventLogEntryType.Information);

Setting up correct Git config parameters on Windows

So when configuring Git to run on Windows, I ran into an annoying thing that took me a bit to figure out.

When you configure Git via bash, specifying the config setting with git config --global yadayadayada was not properly linking to the editors, diff tools, etc. The reason was that the config file could not determine the location of the apps because quotes were either missing, or added to the config file without escape characters.

Here is the .gitconfig file:

[user]
 name = mkadlec
 email = kadlecmark@hotmail.com
[core]
 editor = \"C:/Program Files (x86)/Git/bin/git-core-editor.sh\"
 autocrlf = false
[merge]
 tool = kdiff3
[diff]
 tool = kdiff3
 guitool = kdiff3
[mergetool "kdiff3"]
 keepBackup = false
 trustExitCode = false
 path = \"c:/Program Files (x86)/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe\"
[difftool "kdiff3"]
 path = \"c:/Program Files (x86)/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe\"
 keepBackup = false
 trustExitCode = false
 cmd = \"c:/Program Files (x86)/KDiff3/kdiff3.exe\" \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"

See? Look closely, you have to escape all the quotations, and wrap any file locations with quotes if they are not. Once configured, all is good!