This Month’s Code – log4net!

log4net is a tool to help you output log statements to a variety of output targets. log4net is a port of the excellent log4j framework to the .NET runtime. The developers have kept the framework as similar to the original log4j as possible while taking advantage of new features in the .NET runtime.

There are a few interesting things about log4net worth looking at. One is its support for different framework versions across various platforms. The currently supported list is:

• Microsoft .Net Framework 1.0 (1.0.3705)
• Microsoft .Net Framework 1.1 (1.1.4322)
• Microsoft .Net Compact Framework 1.0 (1.0.5000)
• Mono 0.25 or higher
• Microsoft Shared Source CLI 1.0

Impressive! Another interesting feature to me is the hierarchical logging architecture which is controllable at runtime. You can get as fine-grained as you want, to the point of being able to turn logging on or off and specify a particular output target for a single class! There are 13 logging targets provided, and log4net is architected for extension, not to mention the ability to customize logging output format! Perhaps most important of all, log4net is exhaustively documented.

One question that comes to mind is how this compares to the Enterprise Instrumentation Framework that Microsoft has put out. Fortunately Daniel Cazzulino has an interesting EIF vs. log4net comparison on his blog.

Look for more to come about log4net as we explore the code this month!

As a refresher, the following is reproduced from last month’s Code of the Month post…

What is the Code of the Month?

The basic idea of the code of the month is to highlight an open source software program. Download it, use it, and read the code. If you’re motivated enough, write an extension to it or fix a bug or two, but the key is to get in there and read the code. Here are a few tips for reading code.

If you blog and want to share your thoughts on the code, just link back to this post. Then everyone can read through your perspective on the code. If you don’t blog or don’t want to write anything up, that’s fine too.

The Benefits

• Practice reading other people’s code (unless I’m highlighting your program)
• Exposure to different ways of programming
• Improvements to your own code!