Minor Description
The log4j tool has the ability to specify a system property to point to the logging configuration file. For instance, when starting a java program (such as tomcat), one can pass "-Dlog4j.configuration=http://mydomain/log4j.xml" as a command line parameter. Log4j checks to see whether this property is available and, if it is, uses the return value from the URL to configure categories and appenders.
A similar mechanism in log4net would allow a few improvements in logging configuring:
- No need to use the XmlConfiguratorAttribute in any assemblies
- No need to know at design time where the log4net config file will be located
- Ability to configure logging for all components in an app domain by setting a property in the app domain's config file
- Ability to configure logging for all components on a machine by setting a property in the machine.config file
- Ability to updating config file contents without updating app or machine config contents.
I'd propose doing a direct mirror of the log4j capabilities into log4net as follows:
- Update the LogManager class with a static constructor that mirrors the static block in the LogManager class in log4j
- Use System.Configuration.ConfigurationSettings.AppSettings.Get(...) instead of java's System.getProperty(...)
- Don't support the configuratorClass attribute (yet) because the XmlConfigurator seems to be the only logical choice
- Don't implement the DEFAULT_XML_CONFIGURATION_FILE or DEFAULT_CONFIGURATION_FILE property checks (yet).