[VELOCITY-392] Switch to a better log system - slf4j

• Type: Improvement
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Minor
• Resolution: Won't Fix
• Affects Version/s: 1.5
• Component/s: Engine
• Environment: Operating System: All; Platform: All
• Bugzilla Id: 35677
• Assignee: Henning Schmiedehausen
• Reporter: Jens Elkner
• Created: 10/Jul/05 15:22
• Updated: 27/Oct/08 18:34
• Resolved: 05/Nov/06 19:05

Description

Since I'm still very unhappy with the current logging workaround in velocity, I
removed the complete velocity logsystem stuff and replaced it with slf4j (see
http://slf4j.org/manual.html ; http://slf4j.org/faq.html). So, the final thing
is a little bit smaller and should be wrt. logging easier to use (i.e. no need
for passing runtime svc handles back and forth just to be able to log
something), much faster, safer and more precise and powerful than the old one...

In case your are interested, I'll attach the patch made against the saturday
evening svn repository. It basically contains the log changes as well as some
code cleaning (i.e. remove/comment out unsed vars/methods, removed unneccessary
casts as well as nested else clauses, removed throw XExceptions, which are
actually not thrown). Finally I switched many log.info into log.debug, since the
appropriate messages are important for developers only and should not irritate
the enduser (who usually doesn't even understand that freak language ).

To get the thing running out of the box, I modified the buildfile to include
log4j.properties in the jar, so that nlog4j aka log4j NG finds and uses it
automatically, if one has not explictly configured it. And of course
build/lib/log4j has been replaced with nlog4j (see
http://www.slf4j.org/nlog4j/download.html)

Regards,
jens.

Issue Links

• is related to: VELOCITY-168 RFE: switch to commons-logging
• relates to: VELOCITY-621 Update to SLF4J or workaround?