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GTAW-LOG-PARSER

Name: GTAW-Log-Parser (blancodagoat fork)
Author: Blanco

A fork of AdvGTAW/GTAW-Log-Parser, the long-running community tool that converts the .storage chat logs GTA World writes during play into readable, filterable text. The original ships two apps: a minimal WinForms parser (ParserMini.exe) and a fuller WPF assistant (GTAWAssistant.exe) with backup, filtering, and themes. Upstream development slowed in 2024 after light contributor patches for the GTA5 Enhanced launcher and a regex cleanup.

This fork (v5.0.0) rebuilds both apps on .NET 8, extracts a shared class library, modernizes the threading and theming stacks, and ships ship-readiness foundations the original didn't have: an xUnit test suite, structured Serilog logging, opt-in Sentry crash reporting (off by default, gated by GTAW_SENTRY_DSN), GitHub Actions CI on every push, and a tag-push auto-release workflow. Two new user-facing features land on top of that: a Live Tail window for streaming chat lines as they're written, and an in-app auto-updater that downloads and swaps the running executable.

DOWNLOADS — v5.0.0

Two apps, two flavors each. fdd builds need the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime installed (most modern Windows machines have it — recommended). selfcontained builds bundle the runtime: bigger, but no install needed.

GTAW Assistant

Full WPF app — backup, filter, themes, Live Tail, auto-updater

↓ fdd-win-x64.exe 13 MB ↓ selfcontained-win-x64.exe 175 MB

ParserMini

Minimal WinForms one-shot parser — no UI chrome, just convert

↓ fdd-win-x64.exe 1.4 MB ↓ selfcontained-win-x64.exe 163 MB

All releases · github.com/blancodagoat/GTAW-Log-Parser/releases · CHANGELOG.md

WHAT IT DOES (UPSTREAM)

Core capabilities inherited from AdvGTAW/GTAW-Log-Parser and preserved in this fork:

Parses GTA World chatlog.storage JSON into readable text (IC, OOC, /me, /do, /pm, radio, phone, dispatch …)
ParserMini — minimal WinForms one-shot: drop a .storage, get text out
GTAW Assistant — full WPF app with persistent settings, MahApps Metro theming, accent colors, light / dark / sync-with-system
Auto-detects the GTA V process (Legacy + Enhanced) and locates the newest .storage on disk via ChatLogScanner
Background backup controller — periodic dumps of the parsed log to a chosen folder
Filter window with regex criteria, message-type toggles, and quick filtering
Localization layer (multiple UI languages) via LocalizationController
Update-check against GitHub releases

MODERNIZATION (.NET 8)

Both apps migrated from .NET Framework 4.8 to .NET 8 (net8.0-windows)
SDK-style csproj (~300 lines of XML removed)
New Shared/ class library: ChatLogParser, ChatLogScanner, LocalizationController
MahApps.Metro 1.6.5 → 2.4.10 (theming API rewrite, ThemeManager.Current)
Octokit 0.48 → 14, MahApps.IconPacks 3.7 → 5.0, Extended.Wpf.Toolkit 4.0 → 4.7
Costura.Fody / Resource.Embedder dropped in favour of PublishSingleFile
BackupController: Thread + bool flags + Thread.Sleep polling → Task + CancellationToken + Task.Delay (kills the 10s shutdown latency)
Regex-over-JSON parser replaced with Utf8JsonReader streaming
IWshRuntimeLibrary COM ref replaced with a managed ShellLink P/Invoke wrapper (unblocks CLI builds)
Nullable enabled across all projects; 45 nullable warnings fixed

NEW FEATURES

Live Tail window — FileSystemWatcher on .storage with 200 ms debounce; on every change, re-parses, diffs against the previous full log, appends only new lines, auto-scrolls. Optional timestamp strip + Clear button.
In-app auto-updater — uses Octokit to locate the matching framework-dependent asset, downloads it next to the running exe, then spawns a one-liner that waits 2 s, swaps over the running exe, and restarts. Falls back to opening the releases page on failure.

OBSERVABILITY

Serilog rolling-file sink at %LocalAppData%\GTAW-Log-Parser\logs\, retained 7 days
14 silent Debug.WriteLine sites replaced with structured Log.Error / Log.Information
Sentry.Serilog sink wired up but gated by GTAW_SENTRY_DSN env var — off by default (privacy by default)
Centralised in Shared/Logging.cs; both apps call Logging.Initialize() / Logging.Shutdown()

TESTING & RELEASES

xUnit test project (Shared.Tests): 19 tests across ChatLogParser, ChatLogScanner, LocalizationController
GitHub Actions build.yml: build + test on every push/PR (windows-latest)
GitHub Actions release.yml: tag-push publishes 4 single-file artifacts (fdd + self-contained × Parser + Assistant) and creates the GitHub release
CHANGELOG.md in Keep a Changelog format

HOSTING

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Fork chain: AdvGTAW/GTAW-Log-Parser → blancodagoat

Original by AdvGTAW, distributed under GPLv3 — this fork keeps the same license.

View source on GitHub