[logback-dev] [JIRA] Commented: (LBCLASSIC-300) Add ability to manually specify configuration BEFORE autoconfiguration

[Phil (JIRA)]

    [ http://jira.qos.ch/browse/LBCLASSIC-300?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=12302#action_12302 ] 

Phil commented on LBCLASSIC-300:
--------------------------------

That is an excellent point, Ceki.  I will definitely profile the changes prior to submitting the patch.  If the changes don't result in any performance increase, then I will close this issue, as there is no point.


In the meantime, I compared logback-classic (using BasicConfigurator, no xml) against slf4j-nop.

I created a simple class with the following main method:

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LoggerFactory.getILoggerFactory();
    }


I ran that class 200 times each from the CLI.  Here are the aggregated results:

logback-classic using BasicConfigurator (no xml):
Min   Max   Average:
0.346 0.415 0.358446

slf4j-nop:
Min   Max   Average:
0.195 0.408 0.212901


Looking at the mins and avgs, logback has about a 70% increase in initialization costs over slf4j-nop.

I don't know exactly how much my proposed change will decrease the initialization costs, but it's definitely worth investigating to me.

> Add ability to manually specify configuration BEFORE autoconfiguration
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: LBCLASSIC-300
>                 URL: http://jira.qos.ch/browse/LBCLASSIC-300
>             Project: logback-classic
>          Issue Type: Improvement
>    Affects Versions: 0.9.29
>            Reporter: Phil
>            Assignee: Logback dev list
>            Priority: Minor
>         Attachments: CliTest.java, CliTest.txt
>
>
> In order to make logback initialization faster, I would like the ability to programmatically configure logback and avoid the logic that happens in ContextInitializer.autoConfig().
> Specifically, refer to this stack that occurs when getILoggerFactory() is initially called...
> 	ch.qos.logback.classic.util.ContextInitializer.autoConfig() line: 147	
> 	org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder.init() line: 85	
> 	org.slf4j.impl.StaticLoggerBinder.<clinit>() line: 55	
> 	org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.bind() line: 121	
> 	org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.performInitialization() line: 111	
> 	org.slf4j.LoggerFactory.getILoggerFactory() line: 268	
> Now, for some background...
> I am using logback for a fast executing CLI program.  Right now, initializing logback dominates the execution time of my CLIs.  For example...
> When I started with logback, I was using logback.xml.  If one of my CLIs took 1.5 seconds to run, I would see that initializing logback was taking 1 of those seconds (I used the yourkit profiler to identify this).  66% of the execution time is unacceptable.
> So, I switched from using logback.xml to programatically configuring logback in Java with the following code..
> {code}
>     LoggerContext loggingContext = (LoggerContext) LoggerFactory.getILoggerFactory();
>     loggingContext.reset();
>     ...
>     FileAppender<ILoggingEvent> fileAppender = new FileAppender<ILoggingEvent>();
>     ...
>     Logger rootLogger = loggingContext.getLogger(Logger.ROOT_LOGGER_NAME);
>     rootLogger.addAppender(fileAppender);
> {code}
> This reduced the initialization time quite a bit.  Now logback initialization is taking about .3 seconds.  This is much better.
> However, I still think this can be improved by completely skipping the auto config logic.
> The initial call to LoggerFactory.getILoggerFactory() will attempt to auto configure logback.... which searches for groovy files, xml files, and falls back to BasicConfigurator.  I don't need this auto configuration logic, since I am just going reset it and configure it myself anyway.
> I would like the ability to programmatically configure logback and totally avoid this auto configuration.
> Ideally I would be able to construct a LoggerContext instance, or the root Logger, or something.  Then allow slf4j to bind to it without going through the auto config steps.

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