[e4-dev] Logging and tracing in e4

["Bartsch, Eduard" <eduard.bartsch@xxxxxxx>]

Hi everyone.

I would like to start a discussion how we can progress on logging and tracing topic in e4 and also offer help to move the implementation forward. 

I have checked the wiki page http://wiki.eclipse.org/E4/EAS/Logging_and_Tracing. It suggests using the org.eclipse.e4.core.services.Logger as an API for logging and says nothing about tracing. 

So, I have played around with org.eclipse.e4.core.services.Logger.

There are some aspects that I liked. The logger can be retrieved manually via EclipseContext as well as automatically via dependency injection. It provides some useful methods that do format-based argument substitution (e.g. public void error(String format, Object[] args) ).

I also have some questions and comments. I don't know the plans w.r.t. to logging/tracing so, please, excuse me if I am pointing to things that are already well known and are about to be addressed.

Here are my questions and comments:

The e4 Logger class is not documented (almost no javadoc or other comments). Are there plans to change it before 1.0 release?

The e4 Logger is an abstract class that provides some implementations and not an interface. Any reason for that?

The e4 Logger uses DebugTrace service for writing traces. But all traces are written using org.eclipse.e4.ui.workbench as bundle name and null (mapped to /debug) as debug option. The method isTraceEnabled (of WorkbenchLogger) always returns false so that it has to be ignored so far. The method trace() bravely traces everything into DebugTrace ignoring the debug options settings. Since the calls to DebugTrace are wrapped by Logger class, the information in the trace file about class name and method (as well as about plug-in name and debug option, see above) is useless. Since the debug option is always null, the abilities to enable/disable tracing in a fine-granular way provided by DebugOptions are not used/ignored.  

I haven't yet made my thoughts about the logging part of the Logger class. I will provide them later during discussion.

Best regards,
Ed

Eduard Bartsch
Development Architect
SAP AG
Dietmar-Hopp-Allee 16
69190 Walldorf, Germany
T +49 6227 7-47474
E eduard.bartsch@xxxxxxx
www.sap.com

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