Re: [boost] [log] Review-ready version in the Vault

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.