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I'm looking for a logging framework and it seems log4net is or was very popular. The last release was over 2 years ago. It has not been updated for .net 3.0 or 3.5 or even visual studio 2008. Is there something more recent (other then entlib) I should be considering?

Joel Coehoorn
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Chip
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    Does something like a logging library need constant updating? I've used it and it works pretty well. – Min Nov 02 '09 at 21:41
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    EntLib is *NOT* something you should be considering. Use log4net – Krzysztof Kozmic Nov 02 '09 at 21:47
  • What is your reasoning for 'not' using EntLib? Isn't EntLib 'best practice' code? – Chris Nov 02 '09 at 22:27
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    Entlib is nice and all but I happen to think it's like using a mac truck to kill a house fly. It's not out of the running since it's the most recently updated logging framework. – Chip Nov 03 '09 at 01:19
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    log4net is not dead, check the source rep and you will see that there is still activity in there. And as others have stated here, if a library works and works well: use it! – Peter Lillevold Nov 03 '09 at 08:55
  • @min it works pretty well until u hit a bug like this https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/LOG4NET-132 – Simon Aug 15 '11 at 01:39
  • @Simon - took a little while but was fixed in 1.2.13 release according to the link – KornMuffin Jan 15 '14 at 21:25

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Log4j (which was the basis for log4net) hasn't been updated in years. There are other alternatives from the same author (slf4j and logback) and others, but log4j is still used plenty and plenty viable. It isn't dead, it just got to the point where there was nothing more really was needed for it. Nothing that justified the work or wouldn't break backwards compatability. When that happens to a commercial project, the company has to invent a whole other purpose for the product or do something else and the product does indeed die. In open source, not really.

As a point of comparison, JUnit was basically going nowhere for years. Then Java got annotations, JUnit got competition (TestNG) and it is suddenly moving along again. Now the original developers may not end up being around in every case, but then the project would be forked or adapted. For example, TestNG allowed a smooth migration path from JUnit.

So the bottom line is if it is popular and used, it will not die on you.

Yishai
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log4net is a port of something originally written in java. The port is more or less complete.

Additionally, the port targeted the .Net 2.0 runtime and .Net 3.0 and .Net 3.5 are also built on top of that same runtime. Therefore you can load log4net into Visual Studio 2008 and use it in a .Net 3.5 project if you want to. So as I understand it there's no real need to make a new version specifically for .Net 3.5 or Visual Studio 2008 at the moment. Visual Studio 2010 may of course change that (new runtime).

Joel Coehoorn
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    Joel I agree with you in theory. Stable and it has the features but in software stagnation = death. Don't want to invest the time if that is the case. – Chip Nov 02 '09 at 21:53
  • Well, vs2010 beta 2 is available now and includes a go-live license. So it might be worth checking whether there's any movement towards an _eventual_ release for .Net 4. – Joel Coehoorn Nov 02 '09 at 22:15
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    I don't think it's dead as we're quite satisfied logging via UDP to a (win) syslogd with it. One could say it's (almost) feature complete which might be an explanation for the "missing" recent releases. – andyp Nov 02 '09 at 22:22
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The project seems to be alive again and version 1.2.11 was released:

http://stefan.samaflost.de/blog/en/Apache/Log4Net/working_on_the_1.2.11_release.html

Stefan Egli
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