[Python-Dev] distutils & stderr

[Trent Mick]

On Fri, Feb 01, 2002 at 10:48:22AM -0500, Guido van Rossum wrote:
> I could see three levels at most:
> 
> - verbose, tells you about everything it could do
> - default, only tells you about things it does and not about things it
>   skips
> - quiet, only tells you about errors


FYI,

The log4j (j==Java) system uses five levels:
    1. debug
    2. info
    3. warn
    4. error
    5. fatal

Application code uses the system something like this (simplified Python
translation):

    # Go through some steps to get a "Logger" singleton object.
    import log4py
    log = log4py.getLogger("distutils")

    # Then you call methods on the 'log' object for the level of message to
    # write.
    log.debug("Distutil *could* do BAR.")
    ...
    log.info("Distutils is now doing FOO")
    ...
    log.warn("Beware, SPAM may not be what you expect.")
    ...
    log.error("This is just wrong.")
    ...
    log.fatal("This is really bad. Aborting EGGS.")
    
    # The 'log' object knows if, say, log.debug() calls should actually
    # result in any output (because the setup.py option processing sets the
    # level to print). So, if I use 'python setup.py -q' the print level is
    # set to "WARN" (or perhaps "ERROR") and only .warn(), .error(), and
    # .fatal() calls get printed.

That is just an idea of how it could be done. You could reduce the logging
levels down to three, as Guido suggested.

c.f. http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j/docs/index.html


Cheers,
Trent

-- 
Trent Mick
TrentM@ActiveState.com