Consider switching logging to slf4j

[badgerwithagun]

Currently we force a log4j dependency on applications. There's no need.

[badgerwithagun]

@venushka - would value your thoughts on this one.

[tsg21]

Yes, I think this is a sensible plan.

Currently we force a log4j dependency on applications. There's no need.

We don't - commons.logging can be hooked into other logging implementations, but it's nowhere near as widely used as slf4j is.

[venushka]

I agree, we should switch to slf4j.

One thing to keep in mind though, we should make sure the test execution within Maven should be provided with a logging implementation (log4j like we already have probably) with the required configuration to ensure the logs from tests are redirected to a file and not be printed to console. Travis builds are limited to 4MB of console output for opensource projects, which is more than adequate for the build, but not including tests logs in console.

[badgerwithagun]

Yeah I saw that on your fork - makes sense.

[tsg21]

I've had a go at this in a fork. It's a reasonably easy find-replace.

[badgerwithagun]

@tsg21 - submit a PR!

Actually... scratch that. Let's confirm we actually want to do it first. If so, it'll be easier to just push directly.

[tsg21]

Don't see any reason why we'd want to stick to commons-logging?

[tsg21]

Anyone like to offer up a reason why we should keep the dependency on log4j?

[badgerwithagun]

Nope. Let's just do this. Could you create a PR with commons->slf4j and removal of log4j?

[tsg21]

Will do