[Python-Dev] Using logging in the stdlib and its unit tests (original) (raw)

Vinay Sajip vinay_sajip at yahoo.co.uk
Fri Dec 10 23:16:39 CET 2010

Antoine Pitrou <solipsis pitrou.net> writes:

Guido van Rossum <guido python.org> wrote: > 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?

Funny, because displaying only errors and silencing other messages is exactly what I expected logging to do by default.

The one thing I'm sure of is that it's hard to find more than a couple of people with the same view about what the default should be. Anyone for bikesheds? :-)

IMO as long as it's just a small amount of work to get the specific effect that you want, it doesn't really matter too much what the default is - though of course I'd like it to be "right", whatever that means ;-) And whatever it is, it's going to upset some group of people because they have to add one line (or so) to get it to do what they want, and they feel really strongly that they shouldn't have to add that one line. In a way, I suppose I'm not unhappy that this is all we're arguing about and not anything more substantive. Some useful feedback about the documentation has emerged, too. I would (naturally) like to see broader adoption of logging in the standard library, and the view from Python core developers who have expressed opinions on this thread seems to be that the present behaviour is an obstacle to that adoption. I have my views but I'm not hidebound by them, hence the proposed change and the posting about it on the logging blog and c.l.py, just to let people know what's coming.

It'll be interesting to see, once this change is implemented, whether the suggested obstacle really has been an obstacle, rather than (as I suspect) the low level of logging adoption in the stdlib being largely being a matter of plain inertia. But even if it helps make possible a better resolution of #10626 (as an archetype of unraisable-exception scenarios), that would be a good outcome.

Regards,

Vinay Sajip

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