[jboss-dev] My logging ultimatum

[David M. Lloyd]

On Tue, 11 Dec 2007 13:06:43 -0500 "Jason T. Greene"
<jason.greene at redhat.com> wrote:

> Tim Fox wrote:
> > I think what we really need here is to write another "meta" logging 
> > framework for our projects to use, and that can just delegate to slf4j, 
> > log4j, java.util logging etc ;)
> 
> We do, it's jboss-commons-logging. :)

Tim was being ironic I think.  Let me answer this in a different way -
jboss commons logging solves the problem within the container just fine.
The container can now (presumably [I haven't tried it yet!]) allow the
user to configure it to use the JDK appender system, or log4j.  And
within the container, you've got a much nicer API than either log4j or
JDK logging provides.

But what I'm really referring two are other libraries that require
logging, but may or may not run within a container (ours or others).  In
this case, using *any* framework (even meta frameworks like
jboss-commons-logging, slf4j, and apache commons-logging) just causes
more problems for the user, who then needs JARs for every framework and
meta-framework around.

The key advantage to JDK logging is that it's in the JDK.  This is
actually it's only advantage IMO - but it is the critical advantage
that makes the difference.  If you want logging in your library, but
you don't want to require a JAR for it, you really have no other option.

Tim Fox wrote:
> Seriously though, I echo many of David concerns.
> 
> We are in a similar position as David (and Bela) with MINA - I don't 
> really want to pull in a slf4j dependency. Although I understand Trustin 
> has some difficulty in removing this due to the way Apache democracies 
> work :(

Well, I've sent a heartfelt appeal to the MINA list, so we'll see what
happens.

- DML