[jboss-dev] Something of interest to anyone who has to deal with java.util.logging vs. log4j vs. commons-logging vs. ....

In the course of developing and debugging the jBPM web app (which uses a number of Sun libraries), I dusted off and finished an old thing I had started a while ago which basically adapts java.util.logging into log4j. I was telling Jason Greene about it and he suggested I forward it on to you to see what you think of it. I put the source into my personal repository at http://svn.flurg.com/java/logbridge ... also I've created a release of the current stable version which can be gotten directly from http://java.flurg.com/downloads/logbridge-1.0.0.jar . Basically you use it by passing "-Djava.util.logging.manager=logbridge.SourceLogManager" to the JVM at startup. You also have to have log4j in your initial classpath (this kinda sucks but I can't think of another way around it). It works by creating a custom LogManager that replaces the standard Logger with one that wraps an equivalent log4j Logger. Also it maps log levels in a fairly intuitive way (at least, in my opinion). There's some weak reference stuff in there to make sure that it doesn't hold on to other people's classloaders. Anyway, have a look if you want. I didn't spend too much time on it, because I'm sure if I did, Tom would give me a hard time about it. :-) But I admit that I envision this kind of thing as a replacement for commons logging. People can just use the logging API built in to their JVM, and we catch it and make it look nice in our log file by using the log4j appenders instead. - DML