[COMPATIBILITY] Internal logging

[Scott Deboy <sd...@comotivsystems.com>]

Many people use root loggers, and now log4j's logging will be included in their application.

Some folks will see this as an incompatibility - if they expected to be able to drop in 1.3 and have their log output look identical to how 1.2 behaved.

It will be interesting to hear from users whether this is an issue.

At a minimum, we need to provide a very clear example of how to keep log4j internal logging output out of their logs.

We could consider programmatically defaulting log4j output off unless log4j.debug=true (if we choose to continue to support log4j.debug, which we probably should).

Scott

Re: [COMPATIBILITY] Internal logging

[Jacob Kjome <ho...@visi.com>]

Quoting Curt Arnold <ca...@apache.org>:

>
> On Jan 3, 2006, at 7:30 AM, Scott Deboy wrote:
>
> > Many people use root loggers, and now log4j's logging will be
> > included in their application.
> >
> > Some folks will see this as an incompatibility - if they expected
> > to be able to drop in 1.3 and have their log output look identical
> > to how 1.2 behaved.
> >
> > It will be interesting to hear from users whether this is an issue.
> >
> > At a minimum, we need to provide a very clear example of how to
> > keep log4j internal logging output out of their logs.
> >
> > We could consider programmatically defaulting log4j output off
> > unless log4j.debug=true (if we choose to continue to support
> > log4j.debug, which we probably should).
> >
> > Scott
>
>
> There have been pretty frequent complaints on the mailing list,
> particularly about inconsequential internal INFO messages showing up
> in the application log.  The log4j 1.2 unit tests also depend on the
> output being free of log4j internal logging.
>

There has been some confusion about this, but keep in mind that most of it came
from stuff that you couldn't turn off at all.  This was logging that was coming
from LogLog whether you had log4j.debug=false or legitimately turned it off in
the logging configuration.  The issue was in alphas up to, and including,
Log4j-1.3alpha6.  So, lets not confuse the two issues here and blow this
problem out of proportion.  These questions have dropped off significantly
since alpha7.

Keep in mind that if you set the root logger to be DEBUG or INFO, you are going
to get bombarded with messages from every conceivable package using Log4j
directly or via commons-logging.  If one is inclined to do this, I think one is
 probably also inclined to turn off packages such as Jakarta-commons components
and whatnot.  With Log4j-1.3, the only surprise is that now they get Log4j
internal logging being controled from their configuration, which didn't happen
before (and this is a good thing, BTW).  But it's hardly different from any
other package.  The quick fix is, obviously, to set the root logger to nothing
lower than WARN and to specifically turn on other loggers rather than have them
on by default.  That's a basic Log4j education issue.

> My thinking is that we should probably move the internal logging into
> another branch of the hierarchy (that is loggers starting with
> "internal." or "log4j.", not "org.apache.log4j") and set the default
> threshold for the internal loggers to ERROR in the Hierarchy
> initialization.
>

That's extra documentation and would surprise the heck out of me if it were
implemented.  Why should Log4j's own logging be treated specially?  I expect
that if I configure org.apache.commons to log to DEBUG, that I get debug
messages out of Jakarta-commons components.  Likewise, I expect that if I
configure org.apache.log4j to log to DEBUG, that I get debug messages out of
the Log4j component.  This behavior is "least surprising" to me.  Any other
behavior is something I would forget and have to look up in the docs to
determine what special case we applied for Log4j internal logging.  Please
don't change the way it is currently.

-1 to changing the current behavior of internal logging.  The onus to do so
seems to be based on a misunderstanding of the issues involved.

Jake




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Re: [COMPATIBILITY] Internal logging

[Curt Arnold <ca...@apache.org>]

On Jan 3, 2006, at 7:30 AM, Scott Deboy wrote:

> Many people use root loggers, and now log4j's logging will be  
> included in their application.
>
> Some folks will see this as an incompatibility - if they expected  
> to be able to drop in 1.3 and have their log output look identical  
> to how 1.2 behaved.
>
> It will be interesting to hear from users whether this is an issue.
>
> At a minimum, we need to provide a very clear example of how to  
> keep log4j internal logging output out of their logs.
>
> We could consider programmatically defaulting log4j output off  
> unless log4j.debug=true (if we choose to continue to support  
> log4j.debug, which we probably should).
>
> Scott


There have been pretty frequent complaints on the mailing list,  
particularly about inconsequential internal INFO messages showing up  
in the application log.  The log4j 1.2 unit tests also depend on the  
output being free of log4j internal logging.

My thinking is that we should probably move the internal logging into  
another branch of the hierarchy (that is loggers starting with  
"internal." or "log4j.", not "org.apache.log4j") and set the default  
threshold for the internal loggers to ERROR in the Hierarchy  
initialization.

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