The cascading.operation.Debug function is a utility function (actually, it's a Filter) that prints the current argument Tuple to either stdout or stderr. Used with one of the DebugLevel enum values (NONE, DEFAULT, or VERBOSE), different debug levels can be embedded in a pipe assembly.

The example below inserts a Debug operation at the VERBOSE level, but configures the planner to remove all Debug operations from the resulting Flow.

Pipe assembly = new Pipe( "assembly" );

// ...
assembly = new Each( assembly, DebugLevel.VERBOSE, new Debug() );
// ...

// head and tail have same name
FlowDef flowDef = new FlowDef()
  .setName( "debug" )
  .addSource( "assembly", source )
  .addSink( "assembly", sink )
  .addTail( assembly );


// tell the planner to remove all Debug operations
flowDef
  .setDebugLevel( DebugLevel.NONE );

// ...
FlowConnector flowConnector = new HadoopFlowConnector();

Flow flow = flowConnector.connect( flowDef );

Note that if the above Flow is run on a cluster, the stdout on the cluster nodes will be used. Nothing from the debug output will display on the client side. Debug is only useful when testing things in an IDE or if the remote logs are readily available.