Bug#393845: libglib2.0-0: glib error logging facilities provide no filtering or redirection

[Joshua Rodman]

On Wed, Oct 18, 2006 at 09:45:59AM +0200, Lo?c Minier wrote:
> severity 393845 wishlist
> forwarded 393845 http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=362749
> stop
> 
>         Hi,
> 
> On Tue, Oct 17, 2006, Joshua Rodman wrote:
> > glib and libraries based on glib provide logging facilities with levels
> > of severity for problems.  However, they do not provide any means to
> > filter or reduce nuisance messages at runtime.  
> 
>  They do; programs are supposed to implement their own log handler if
>  the default one doesn't fit.

The key is "at runtime".  At runtime, the user cannot modify the logging
handler, and cannot implement their own log handler, nor can they
seperate out the warnings from the program's intended output.

>  The GLib logging facilities are not aimed at full-blown logging as in
>  systems such as log4j.
> 
>  I think a complete logging system would be far too expensive in terms
>  of memory usage (just considering the number of applications using
>  glib).
> 
>  However, I do agree that some filtering would be useful when one wants
>  to suppress the warnings or errors in some particular situations;
>  certainly not by default though.

Suffucient would be some chosable switch in glib that obeys some kind of
env variable like

GLIB_NO_SPEW_HEAR_NO_EVIL=yes


>  (I think you also got an answer from upstream.)

The GTK developers insisted on interpreting the bug as a request to not
issue warnings.  They did not address the ability to filter the warnings
as a usability issue.

-josh