[boost] Logging review

From: Sean Hunt (rideau3_at_[hidden])
Date: 2008-02-18 02:19:46

Well, I just thought that I'd pitch in with my first ever boost library 
review!

The biggest issue I see right out is that the tutorial is incredibly 
dense... most tutorials start out with a simple working example, and 
expand from there. This tutorial seems to introduce the concepts rather 
sharply - it takes a long time to even understand how the library works. 
Also, some of the links are broken, because Doxygen implicitly adds 
links to classes based on it's best guess - the repeat of certain names 
like "level" can confuse it a lot. And the diagrams are missing. Some 
documentation is very inadequate, such as 
boost::logging::destination::stream_t (perhaps you should turn on the 
extraction of undocumented members).

The next is that there's a lot of macros (and namespaces, but that's not 
as important. Good code separation is a good thing, in my opinion)! The 
documentation recommends defining a "L_" macro to do your logging. This 
violates many levels of coding philosophy... in my opinion, an approach 
similar to Boost.Lambda should be taken, but I shouldn't be judging the 
library because it doesn't meet my ideal - there's plenty of other good 
implementations, and I'd be happy with any of those.. That said, I think 
that using macros to hide ugly code is not a good idea - a better 
approach would be to hide the ugly code, and provide a friendly interface.

I support the idea of a built-in profiler, and I'll say it out loud so 
that I don't look like I'm trying to attack this library from every 
angle without remorse (I'm not).

I do like the amount of customization that this library offers. It seems 
very impressive, but I think that the approach is a little too generic 
and forces the user to jump through hoops. There needs to be a better 
interface. Right now, the library looks like something that's too 
complex and difficult to be chosen over writing a small class to address 
the user's direct needs.

I really like the idea of a logging library, but logging, like 
documentation, is one of those things that developers don't want to go 
to great extents to do. I'm going to have to vote no for this library. 
But because I haven't actually used it, I only want it counted as a half 
vote.

Sean Hunt