[jboss-as7-dev] Logging Subsystem Changes

Hello All, There have been a few notable changes (pending changes) in the logging subsystem that I should probably make known to every one. The most notable is probably the way the logging.properties file is used. The file will be overwritten each time a change to the logging subsystem is made. It also writes out fully resolved values, e.g. any expressions like ${jboss.root.level:INFO} are not written out. This means that changes to expressions on the XML configuration will be not used until the logging subsystem kicks in. Not writing out expression could be an issue with paths more than anything. This could be an issue if you copy a configuration (from production to dev for example) and expect ${jboss.server.log.dir} to be resolved. Since the full path is written out, it's likely on initial boot without any changes the log will be written to the production directory and file. I can't think of a solid way to fix this issue. Writing out the expression to the logging.properties file wouldn't always work as the system property may not be set yet. There will no longer be a boot.log. On the initial boot of a fresh install the console is the only stream written to until the logging subsystem kicks in which will then write to the server.log as usual. Since the host controller and process controller don't use the logging subsystem, the configuration is as it always has been in the logging.properties file of the $JBOSS_HOME/domain/configuration. Of course if you don't want to use the logging subsystem, then it can be disabled and the logging.properties will be the configuration used for logging. We've introduced logging profiles. A logging profile is like a separate logging subsystem, in a sense at least. All the same operations are on a logging profile. It can be used to define a different logging configuration for a deployment. They can be applied to a deployment by adding a Logging-Profile entry to the MANIFEST.MF for the deployment. log4j appenders can be set-up via a custom-handler. Just define the appenders properties as you would any other custom-handler and it will be wrapped in a handler. The one caveat is it requires the logging subsystem to be used. Since the logging.properties file is always written, appenders will also be written requiring the logging subsystem to use it's appender -> handler. There has been a PR submitted to finally allow for expressions on most of the attributes. Yet to have a PR submitted due to an open PR for STDIO and a new release of STDIO is removing the requirement to use JBoss Log Manager on a standalone server. This would allow a user to use log4j or logback as their log manager to control logging for the server if they'd prefer. -- James R. Perkins JBoss by Red Hat