On Jul 13, 2008, at 5:57 PM, Les Hazlewood wrote:
This is exactly what I've been trying for everyone on this list _NOT_ to think. I didn't write another logging framework. Its just a few delegating interfaces/classes: 1. Is a logging abstraction framework present (SLF4J)? Ok, use it. 2. No logging abstraction framework present? Are we on JDK 1.4? If so, use JDK 1.4 logging 3. None of the above applies? Ok, use System.out. This is not a full fledged logging framework, and it is only a minimal abstraction at that. I can't possibly understand why this concept of loose coupling/high cohesion and Graceful Degredation is so hard for some people on this list to appreciate! This will NOT suffer from class loading problems. It still delegates 95% of effort to SLF4J.
So then what's the point? What show stopper problem are you trying to solve?
I KNOW this is a good idea. In fact, I can guarantee you our end-users will never have a problem with this. 99.9% of people will never know about it, nor ever care. I'm so confident that this is a non issue and will not cause us problems that I can say with absolute comfort that the second someone says "this abstraction concept is causing us problems", that I'd remove it in a heartbeat and just use SLF4J natively everywhere.
So if you know that no one will know about it or care, then why add it?
The fact that some on this list are shooting it down without even _trying_ it, or seeing how it feels for a few weeks or months is driving me insane. That's just closed mindedness when I've already laid out a laundry list of why this is worth trying. We're an Open Source INCUBATOR project - there is nothing wrong with just trying it out. If it doesn't work? Or it actually _does_ cause us a problem? I can revert in 5 minutes. Why isn't that good enough piece of mind for you folks to actually say "ok, lets try it out?". If I end up being wrong, and the 5 minute change has to happen, I'll gladly eat my words and revert. And, only THEN would be be _forcing_ SLF4J on our end users - it doesn't have to happen now. What have you guys got to worry about? I'm not even asking anyone to do a single thing.
Again, issue is not if it's good enough. The issue is what problem are you trying to solve?
Years of thought and experience went into the SLF4J API. Frankly, it's crazy simple. No matter what gets cooked up for the proposed JSecurity logging facade, SLF4J API already does it and, since many, many, other projects use it, the SLF4J API will be easier to grasp by new community members and users.
Regards, Alan
