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List:       log4j-dev
Subject:    Re: Design and evoluton of log4j (Was: AppenderSkeleton.isActive, etc)
From:       "Mark Womack" <mwomack () apache ! org>
Date:       2005-02-27 1:23:33
Message-ID: 002701c51c6a$f681a5d0$5df6fea9 () hogwarts
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OK, every take a deep breath and count to ten.  Please keep one thing in 
mind.  Everyone is acting in what they feel are the best interests of the 
project.  Ceki is making changes he thinks are important.  Curt is 
registering concern and reverting changes to keep things in sync.  Everyone 
is voicing an opinion.  We are all acting in a vacuum of information, in my 
opinion.

I have to agree with Jake.  With all of the other interface changes I can 
think of (RepositorySelector, Configurator), there was some sizable 
discussion around what the changes were, what the changes would mean, whom 
they were most likely to affect, alternatives, and an assessment of benefit. 
If there was something like that for these recent appender changes, I missed 
it.

I'm not saying that these changes don't have benefit, but they were made in 
a vacuum, and the rest of us have been trying to figure out what is going 
on.  I think that the process is working correctly, though the words are 
getting a bit harsh on both sides.  Gump failures indicated that the changes 
were affecting projects, that is what it is supposed to be doing.  Doesn't 
mean we have to revert the changes immediately; I believe that we have 
already stated that we will not be jumping all over ourselves to make sure 
Gump is happy all of the time.  However, Curt (or anyone else, committer or 
not) is well within rights to bring up the issue as a red flag.

I have said before that changes to the Appender interface are a very big 
deal.  Almost no one has written their own RepositorySelector or 
Configurator, but almost everyone has written their own appender.  It was 
one of the first things I did when I installed and learned about log4j. 
That is the beauty of the log4j design, that I can write such a customized 
piece of code and still have it fit into the framework.  With folks like 
Mark Masterson speaking up (author of SNMPTrapAppender), I think it is an 
indication of the level of reaction we can expect from the community in 
making a change in this area.

Doesn't mean that a change should not be be made.  Means it should be 
discussed.  We need to understand what the changes are supposed to be 
solving.  What will be the affects of the change.  When I hear terms like 
"life cycle management", I start to think there is more going on.  We might 
decide, as a community, that we don't want to make those changes, that we 
would rather live with the issues and maintain the api compatibility.  That 
is the process.  Let's follow it.  If it was a change to an area that 
doesn't get much focus or something inside the internal guts of log4j, we 
would not be having such a lengthy and somewhat heated discussion.

Ceki, I think we need to understand exactly what you were trying to solve 
with the changes.  You might have already said this and I just missed the 
thread.  The rest of us need to understand this.

-Mark 



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