use Perl

• Great work, and can I have stealth loggers? (Score:1)

  by Perlmeister (6689)

  Hi Jonathan, you're addressing something really important here.

  It is really unfortunate that important CPAN modules like LWP or Rose::DB don't have usable logging mechanisms in place. Once you're used to category-based logging it's hard to go back to these home-grown and less convenient solutions.

  I think it's a great idea to promote standardized logging on CPAN and letting the user choose the actual implementation will definitely help to make strides towards that goal.

  By the way, I don't agree that
  • Re: (Score:1)

    by jonswar (7880)

    > By the way, I don't agree that "For small modules that want to
    > minimize dependencies, depending on Log4perl (for example) is a
    > non-starter." The Log4perl core doesn't have dependencies other
    > than perl's core modules.
    
    Fair enough.
    
    >
    > One thing missing from your proposal is Log4perl's :easy mode
    > [sourceforge.net]. If you think about it, getting a logger and
    > calling its method is a lot of typing, given that you just want
    > to log something. That's why in Log4perl you can use
    >
    • Re:Great work, and can I have stealth loggers? (Score:1)

      by Perlmeister (6689) on 2007.09.09 1:16 (#57647)

      > So this creates a logger for you with the category set to the current
      > package, similar to easy mode. The syntax is pretty minimal.
      
      Ah, gotcha. So you would call
      
              $log->debug(...)
      
      instead of
      
              DEBUG "..."
      
      which is probably acceptable in terms of additional key strokes
      (although it might throw off novices).
      
      > The problem I have with the DEBUG etc keywords is that they promote
      >inefficient behavior. e.g.
      >
      > DEBUG "Current arguments: " . Dumper(\@_);
      >
      > will take the performance hit for Dumper() even when debug logging
      > isn't turned on.
      
      Sure, although I don't see how
      
              $log->debug("Current arguments: " . Dumper(\@_));
      
      is any different. By the way, in Log4perl you can pass a subroutine ref
      to the method, which eliminates the problem:
      
              DEBUG sub { "Current arguments: " . Dumper(\@_) };
      
      Efficient, but ugly :).
      
      While you're at it, here's my pipe dream: I want something like Dtrace,
      where the logging framework zeroes out the opcodes that are currently
      inactive, and the interpreter rushes through them at light speed with
      practically no overhead.
      

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      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Aristotle (5147)

        Assertions were going to make that possible in 5.10.

        Unfortunately they were recently removed from bleadperl. :-(