Major Description
When we upgraded to 1.6.2 from 1.5.0, we began experiencing failures:
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.RuntimeInstance.getTemplate(RuntimeInstance.java:1400)
at org.apache.velocity.runtime.RuntimeSingleton.getTemplate(RuntimeSingleton.java:326)
at org.apache.velocity.app.Velocity.mergeTemplate(Velocity.java:352)
We eventually traced this back to Log4JChute attempting to create velocity.log in an unwritable $CWD.
I realize you may or may not consider this a bug, as you may wish to have the system fail if it can't log. However, I couldn't even find any output indicating the initial failure to create velocity.log causing Velocity to fail to initialize. 
On a related note, is it possible to change the runtime.log default to BLANK so that velocity defaults to using a pre-existing log4j config if it exists?
Although it's certainly an established tradition at this point, It seems a little backward to default to creating it's own log4j configuration - and a google search on velocity.log produces a very large number of people dealing with the problem of Velocity trying to create a velocity.log somewhere that doesn't work.