#23602 Per-workunit "Starting:"/"Completed:" logging under --no-dynamic-ui is too verbose at Info for routine engine bookkeeping Issue created by vin Description With

dynamic_ui = false

(the recommended setting for CI, since the redraw-based dynamic UI produces its own flood of lines when captured to a plain log — see #10536 for background on the general problem), Pants falls back to logging every workunit's start/completion via

log_workunit_state()

in

src/rust/workunit_store/src/lib.rs

, gated only by the workunit's assigned level: fn log_workunit_state(&self, canceled: bool) { let metadata = match self.metadata.as_ref() { Some(metadata) if log::log_enabled!(self.level) => metadata, ... let state = match (&self.state, canceled) { (WorkunitState::Started { .. }, _) => "Starting:", (WorkunitState::Completed { .. }, _) => "Completed:", }; ... log!(self.level, "{state} {effective_identifier}..."); A large number of routine, internal engine steps — pex construction, scheduling, etc. — are assigned

Level::Info

, which is also the default

--level

. In a decent-sized monorepo running many targets in parallel, this produces hundreds of low-signal lines per CI run, e.g.:

06:01:14.52 [INFO] Completed: Scheduling: Building pytest_runner.pex
06:01:15.66 [INFO] Completed: Building pytest_runner.pex
06:01:15.66 [INFO] Starting: Building pytest_runner.pex

None of these carry information a human scanning CI logs can act on — they're bookkeeping, not signal — but because they're logged at

Info

, they're interleaved with (and drown out) the actual per-target pass/fail results that matter. The only ways to suppress them today are: •

--level=warn

, which also silences unrelated, genuinely useful

Info

logging (e.g.

[stats] log = true

output), or •

log_levels_by_target = {"workunit_store": "warn"}

, which blanket-silences the entire

workunit_store

target rather than just the low-signal bookkeeping workunits. Ask Please consider lowering the default level for this generic `Starting:`/`Completed:` fallback narration on purely-internal bookkeeping workunits (pex building, scheduling, and similar engine-internal steps) to

Debug

, consistent with the precedent already noted in #10536 that

Process

starts are marked

Debug

"in favor of logging from the @rule." Higher-signal workunits (goal-level results, failures) can stay at their current level; it's specifically the internal-plumbing workunits that are noisy at

Info

without being useful there. Pants version 2.31.0 OS Linux (CI: GitHub Actions, ubuntu-x86) Additional info Non-interactive CI logs,

dynamic_ui = false

, many targets built/tested in parallel — this is where the volume becomes a real readability problem (hundreds of these lines per run in our case). pantsbuild/pants