[Python-Dev] Using logging in the stdlib and its unit tests

[Guido van Rossum]

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 11:39 AM, Vinay Sajip <vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:
> Bill Janssen <janssen <at> parc.com> writes:
>
>> Liked it just fine -- easier to write.  But nothing came out!  Because
>> it's got this odd idea (from Java?) about "severities" of messages, and
>> by default passes nothing less "threatening" than warnings, because
>> logger.root is initialized by default to WARNING.
>
> The idea about severity of messages is based on the premise that there might be
> different audiences for logged messages, and that these can change over time. A
> fairly common developer perspective on logging is that a logger equates to a
> destination (e.g. console or file) and the only audience for logging is the
> developer themselves. So, "handlers" and "loggers" seem complicated, perhaps
> over-complicated.
>
> In more complex systems, there are different stakeholders: end users, sys
> admins, support teams, development teams. You have to consider "what happened"
> (logging event), "where it happened" (logger name), "how important it is"
> (severity or level) and "who wants to know" (handler), because not everyone
> wants to know about everything all the time. That's pretty independent of which
> language you're developing in; it's more a function of the complexity of the
> system you're developing. Since Python is used in some fairly large system
> scenarios - NASA, Google, etc. - it doesn't make sense not to have the whole
> enchilada of logging functionality, at the risk of making it seem complicated to
> users with less complex needs. And importance maps reasonably naturally onto an
> idea of integer levels.
>
> The default setting of WARNING is not from Java either - it's the Unix idea that
> verbosity should be kept to a minimum unless specifically requested. So,
> warnings and errors should be shown, but info and debug not. Imagine if the
> default level was DEBUG - lots of detailed stuff would be displayed, which would
> be off-putting for most users.

And yet, I have helped many people who were baffled by exactly what
Bill observed: logging.info() didn't do anything. Maybe the default
should be INFO?

-- 
--Guido van Rossum (python.org/~guido)