Subject: Re: [boost] [log] Review-ready version in the Vault
From: Vladimir.Batov_at_[hidden]
Date: 2009-02-09 14:21:13
Andrey,
Thank you for your contribution. I do not think I'll be participating in
trial-runs or review as such. However, I read through the documentation
and looked at the interface and I thought I'll give you my first (well,
second, I looked at your lib. before) impression. I realize that everyone
probably has something to say about logging and such a debate can get hot.
So, I want to say beforehand that my reply is merely my impression (not a
review or criticism of any kind).
Firstly, it certainly seems very rich in features and configurable. That
is certainly a huge plus for such a library as logging. However, I was
truly overwhelmed by the documentation, the interface and the deployment
examples. I seemed to be reading about familiar concepts -- severity
levels, sinks, filters, formatters, streams/channels. However, after all
that I did not feel an inch closer to actually deploying your library. I
consider myself a moderately intelligent person but the seeming complexity
felt quite intimidating. Somehow other implementations I read about
(J.Torjo's, log4cpp, log4j, a bunch of loggers at SourceForge) went down
much easier.
Roughly, as a user I'd expect something as straightforward as
boost::log log(name); // Create a log
boost::log::sink sink = boost::log::sink(file)(stdout)(event_log);
// Set up sinks
boost::log::formatter fmt =
boost::log::formatter(date)(thread_id)(name); // Set up the formatter
boost::log channel = log.channel(channel-name); // Create a
channel
log(sink)(fmt); // Associate sinks and formatting
if (log) log << "Hello, main world";
if (channel) channel << "Hello, channel world";
Maybe that's what your interface does. I just did not get that warm and
fuzzy easiness/familiarity feeling after reading the docs and looking at
the deployment examples. I feel there is a considerable room for
improvement here.
In particular I was left puzzled how you actually create a log instance (I
think in the docs it is boost::src::logger). I'd expect to be able to
create a log instance with a name and to be able to retrieve that same
instance by the name anywhere in the program. That is,
boost::log log1(name);
boost::log log2(name);
would be referring to the same log instance (pointer semantics). That'd be
very liberating.
Best,
Vladimir.