Re: Log4j 1.3 Woes

[Jess Holle]

Jess Holle wrote: P.S. As log4j 1.3 now stands, I'd think it would be tempting to repackage all of log4j 1.3 in org.apache.log4j2.* and call it log4j 2.0.  That way you could have log4j 1.2 and 1.3/2.0 in the same classloader at the same time without having to worry about some legacy library that requires 1.2.x and some other than requires 1.3.x.  As it stands now I worry about such issues cropping up more often than not. That's ugly, yes, but 1.3 seems to go out of its way to break both binary and source compatibility -- in which case using the same fully qualified package names is a bad thing! Jess Holle wrote: I just about a day and a half trying to get my code to be log4j 1.3 compatible while still being log4j 1.2.12+ compatible.  Note this was despite the fact that I reviewed the 1.3 compatibility guidelines prior to writing any of this code.  I clearly stepped over the lines in various areas, but there were non-trivial reasons for this. I have to say I am shocked by the lack of compatibility between the two.  I understand the need to clean things up, but there were a lot of gratuitous incompatibilities. Worst of all, despite all my efforts and the fact that my code now compiles just fine against 1.2.12+ and 1.3 alpha 7, I cannot compile against 1.2 and run with 1.3 (or presumably vice versa).  This turns out to be due to the fact that Logger has the following methods in log4j 1.2: isEnabledFor(Priority) log(Priority,Object) log(Priority,Object,Throwable) whereas in log4j 1.3 there are only equivalents of this that take "Level" instead of Priority.  The only alternative here appears to be to introduce some reflection-based utility, but that would defeat the speed and efficiency of these calls whose performance is absolutely critical! For this issue I would really like to see log4j 1.2.13 introduce: isEnabledFor(Level) log(Level,Object) log(Level,Object,Throwable) Also give that most legacy libraries won't be recompiled against a hypothetical 1.2.13 real soon, there is still something to be said for either: Reintroducing Category and Priority Sure their existence is ugly but how much did they *really* hurt anyone? Repackaing log4j 1.3 under org.apache.log4j2.* -- Jess Holle