[jboss-jira] [JBoss JIRA] (AS7-1389) Log API dependencies should be included automatically in deployments

[Scott Hasse (JIRA)]

    [ https://issues.jboss.org/browse/AS7-1389?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12937949#comment-12937949 ] 

Scott Hasse commented on AS7-1389:
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I am afraid I might unfortunately be continuing my quest for understanding without your assistance.  But in either case, in an effort to better understand your viewpoint, it seems to me that point 2) above makes the next strongest case for a "default enabled" visibility setting.  If truly the vast majority of users (or perhaps customers anyway) want it that way, then it might very well make sense to leave the visibility enabled by default even if it does not make sense for other reasons.  In that spirit I think it makes sense to look more closely at the numbers you have stated.

Honestly, in my experience your "99% of the time users want to have centralized logging" number seems vastly overstated.  The three large RedHat ISV's I've worked with each bundled their own logging implementation and configuration specifically designed to isolate their application logging from the container logging.  In addition I've worked with about a dozen smaller application vendors (not officially RedHat ISVs) only one of which actually wanted their logging intermingled with server.log entries.  In working with various clients, I've encountered over 600 custom in-house written applications.  The vast majority of those (over 95%) bundled their own logging implementations and configurations.  This has of course required the additional hassle of configuring isolated classloader repositories in many cases, but apparently those implementers thought it was worth the additional hassle to be able to isolate their logging.

My general impression of some of the reasons why people desire container logs to be separated from application logs is:
1) Different log archiving and retention requirements
2) Different security requirements for log visibility
3) Different log schema/patterns in the application log content 
4) Wanting to do all of the above without having merge/unmerge application-level logging configuration in a container configuration during application deployment/undeployment
5) With multiple applications in one container (or multiple copies of the same application in one container), not wanting to interleave those application logs with each other, and being able to configure the same logging category from different applications or different copies of the same application differently 
6) Avoiding specific defects in the container-provided logging implementation
7) Application-level operational control of application-specific logging without endangering container logging settings
8) Having the application's logging configuration be portable with the application deployable artifact between container instances and container vendors

All of that is of course my real but admittedly anecdotal experience.  Can you help me understand in more depth your 99% number above and the reasons people in your experience seem to desire interleaved logging?  Also, does RedHat have hard numbers from the community, ISVs and support customers to actually quantify this number so we can come to a better understanding of the reality of the situation?

Regards,

Scott
                
> Log API dependencies should be included automatically in deployments
> --------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: AS7-1389
>                 URL: https://issues.jboss.org/browse/AS7-1389
>             Project: Application Server 7
>          Issue Type: Bug
>          Components: Logging
>    Affects Versions: 7.0.0.Final
>            Reporter: David Lloyd
>            Assignee: James Perkins
>             Fix For: 7.1.0.Final
>
>
> The following log APIs should be included by deployments by default:
> * {{org.slf4j}}
> * {{org.apache.commons.logging}}
> * {{org.log4j}}
> These dependencies should override the deployment's versions of these libraries unless explicitly excluded by {{jboss-deployment-structure.xml}}.

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