Installing syslog-ng on Mac is easy, if you use Homebrew for 3rd party packages. Previously, you had to install dependencies and then compile syslog-ng from source. Now, a single command takes care of everything:
brew install syslog-ng
History
Syslog-ng has been part of Homebrew for many years, starting with syslog-ng 3.0 over twelve years ago: https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew-core/commits/master/Formula/syslog-ng.rb. However, it was removed when one of the mandatory dependencies of syslog-ng could not be compiled on MacOS. Version 3.38.1 became part of Homebrew right before Christmas (what a nice present :-) ), and was quickly updated to 4.0.1. Homebrew is better than most major Linux distributions in this aspect including the new major version of syslog-ng!
Practical info
The syslog-ng formula in Homebrew enables most of the optional features of syslog-ng. You can find the full list of dependencies at https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/syslog-ng. Be prepared for a few extra megabytes and for a few strange looking package names.
The syslog-ng documentation is not yet updated to version 4.0. The NEWS file on GitHub contains lots of useful information about changes in version 4.0: https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng/blob/master/NEWS.md
Native log collection on Mac is not (yet) part of syslog-ng. By default, syslog-ng reads the log files as saved by syslogd on the system. However, almost all other features work, except for SNMP and Java.
-
If you have questions or comments related to syslog-ng, do not hesitate to contact us. You can reach us by email or even chat with us. For a list of possibilities, check our GitHub page under the “Community” section at https://github.com/syslog-ng/syslog-ng. On Twitter, I am available as @PCzanik, on Mastodon as @Pczanik@fosstodon.org.