[bind10-dev] [Log4cplus-devel] request for feedback (fwd)

[Shane Kerr]

Jeremy,

Just taking a stab at this... (and moving to the public BIND 10 list)...

Anyone else should feel free to add their own feedback here too, and we
can proxy it back to the log4cplus developer(s).

On Wednesday, 2012-05-16 06:47:47 -0500,
"Jeremy C. Reed" <jreed at isc.org> wrote:
> We should respond to this ...
> 
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Wed, 16 May 2012 13:08:13 +0200
> From: V?clav Zeman <vhaisman at gmail.com>
> To: log4cplus-devel at lists.sourceforge.net
> Subject: [Log4cplus-devel] request for feedback
> 
> Hi.
> 
> I have only recently realized that log4cplus is being used wider than
> I thought. The most important (in my eyes) piece of software that I
> have recently discovered using log4cplus is BIND 10. This led me to
> realization that I need more information about log4cplus' users and
> uses. Thus I would like to ask you for feedback about log4cplus. Feel
> free to post answers to following questions to
> <log4cplus-devel at lists.sourceforge.net> mailing list or privately to
> myself.
> 
> 1. What version of log4cplus are you using in what product/library of
> your own?

We work with 1.0.4 certainly. It was already out when we started using
log4cplus, so I don't know about support for earlier versions.
 
> 2. What lead you to choose log4cplus over other competing (log4cpp,
> log4cxx, Pantheios, etc.) libraries?

We always have license concerns (has to be BSD-compatible, so GPL code
is out) limiting our options. We had problems with incompatible APIs in
versions of log4cxx (IIRC), so we switched to log4cplus.

> 3. What do you miss in log4cplus?

Our main problems have to do with concurrent logging from multiple
processes. 

If log4cplus used only a single write() statement, and O_APPEND, when
writing to files then we would not have problems with files. We would
still have issues when writing to the console or other slow devices
(serial ports, etc.) since there is no guarantee that you will get your
entire buffer output.

To work around this in a general way we use advisory locks via fcntl()
to prevent concurrent logging. This seems to be the best solution, and
it would be nice to have this capability in log4cplus itself.

> 4. More comments?

We've found people who helped us get log4cplus into Debian and Ubuntu,
as well as some BSD variants. We'll be trying Fedora (and hopefully
RHEL) next. I'm happy if the log4cplus team wants to take up this
effort. :)

And thanks!

--
Shane