I have been experimenting with adding logging to the driver.
I think it was Gunnar that suggested that I try using log4j. I am
running into a number of difficulties with this and would like to throw
them out to see if there are some solutions.
1) configuring log4j requires an external file to be read, or
configuration inside the driver at startup time. I have tried putting
the configuration file log4j.properties into the jar and letting log4j
initialize itself. This didn't work; it seems the default
Classloader.getSystemResource("log4j.properties") doesn't find it inside
the jar?? So I wrote a little code to get it as a resource bundle much
like the error messages. This worked fine for things that load the
driver in the usual manner, but then while debugging druid, I found that
it doesn't load the driver in the "usual" manner but instead uses the
JarClassLoader. For some reason log4j didn't get initialized properly. I
am sure I can figure out a way around this, but I'm not sure I want to
pursue the log4j option much further.
2)Perceived problems with log4j:
a)we will have to ship another jar with the code.
b)the log4j.properties file has to be placed somewhere on the
filesystem and I'm not sure yet where that should be. It may turn
out that depending on your application the property file has to be
somewhere different.
c) I think due to a and b above we are going to make it more
difficult for new users to get the driver up and running
At this point I am thinking about how to make it default to log nothing,
and then provide properties for the driver to turn on selective logging.
My biggest concern is requiring the installation of another jar, and the
associated problems building the driver
Any suggestions are welcome,
Dave