Format and Consistency of Log statements in Geronimo

[Ashish Sureka]

We [Professor and PhD Student in Software Engineering at a State University
in India] are working towards a source code analysis tool which can assist
practitioners in writing effecting log statements. There are more than
10000 log statements in Geronimo (s_logger.error, s_logger.warn,
s_logger.trace, s_logger.info





.)


The focus of this email is on format and consistency of log statements. We
analyzed all the log statements and observe that the log statements prints
a message and variable(s). However it does not print the log level,
timestamp and thread-name. I believe you agree with me that - Information
like timestamp [Date date= new Date(); new Timestamp(date.getTime())] and
thread-name [Thread.currentThread().getName()] is useful for diagnosing
production failure and root-cause analysis. It is also useful in studying
patterns and trends.


There are only 2 places where we found the thread-name to be printed:

· LOG.debug("Set universe: " + Thread.currentThread() + " " +
newUniverse);

· LOG.debug("Restored universe: " + Thread.currentThread());

We have the following questions:

1) Why log-level, timestamp and thread-name is not logged.

2) How important (different people may have different opinion) is
Point 1 (mentioning log-level, timestamp and thread-name)

3) Is there a standard guideline for developers for writing log
statements – which Geronimo developers need to follow

4) Do you use any log-analysis tool? How are logs analyzed (visual
inspection, home-grown tool/program, external open-source/commercial tool)?

5) Geronimo can be used in a multi-threaded environment and I am not
clear why the thread name is not printed

Thanks in advance and appreciate it. We want to build a tool (not just
about format and consistency) that will be practically useful to
practitioners and will make it open-source & publicly available. This is
part of an academic/research study and hence request a response to all
questions.


Thanks and Regards,


Ashish and Sangeeta