Re: adding logging to Mason (need advice)

Jonathan Swartz wrote:

> Mason does virtually no logging beyond fatal errors and a few warns, 
> and I would like to start adding logging in earnest for 1.3. For example,
>
> * debug log messages for each request and component start/end, that 
> can be turned on for troubleshooting
> * inform log messages when something mildly interesting happens, like 
> the code cache being purged
> * warning log messages for many situations that are currently fatal - 
> for example an object file cannot be written
>
> I was thinking about using log4perl (http://log4perl.sourceforge.net/) 
> for this purpose. It provides great control over which category of log 
> messages are generated, it integrates with all of the Log::Dispatch 
> appenders, and it seems to be well supported.
>
> However, I've never done anything with this project so would 
> appreciate hearing about good or bad experiences.
>
> Would it be easy to add a bunch of log4perl calls to Mason? Should we 
> require users to install log4perl or somehow make the calls only if 
> log4perl is available? Does all the flexibility lead to 
> inefficiencies, e.g., will debug logging calls end up hurting 
> performance even when the user has this turned off?
>
> Thanks for any feedback.
>
> Jon
>
>
I havn't used log4perl, but a logging system of some sort sounds like a 
great idea.

Does the new plugin architecture expose enough functionality to write 
this as a plugin
or set of plugins?

Something like:
Plugins::Log::Debug
Plugins::Log::Fatal
Plugins::Log::Inform

Doing it as a set of plugins which can be included/excluded should avoid 
any performance hit,
and would also provide a nice set of examples for hooking into various
parts of the request for other potential plugin writers.









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