[Development] (long) thoughts on categorized logging (qLog)

[BRM]

> From: "shane.kearns at accenture.com" <shane.kearns at accenture.com>
> To: bm_witness at yahoo.com; lincoln.ramsay at nokia.com; david.faure at kdab.com
> Cc: development at qt-project.org
> Sent: Friday, February 24, 2012 10:46 AM
> Subject: RE: [Development] (long) thoughts on categorized logging (qLog)
>>  well, it probably shouldn't be in CWD regardless of platform.
> Agreed, unless you're specifying the log file via a command line parameter
>>  On Windows, I'd suggest %APPDATA%\<program name> or at 
> minimum
>>  %APPDATA%.
>>  You might even get away with using %TEMP%; but it'd be harder to find
>>  the log then.
>>  On other platforms, something under ${HOME} .
> 
> I don't recommend using the temp path on windows, it usually contains 
> hundreds of files. (and is inside appdata\local by default)

Thus my point about not being able to find stuff.

> The appdata area is organized by application, however it is a hidden folder.
> There's also the local/roaming split for appdata which isn't obvious for 
> cross platform developers.

The local/roaming is also hidden by default. That shouldn't be an issue.
I do agree that it should, if possible, go under an Application name of some sort - typically Organization\Application - 
but didn't suggest necessarily doing so due to a comment (Thiago?) about not wanting to use those.

> The intent of appdata seems to be data that belongs to the application rather 
> than the user (e.g. settings, persistent data)

Yes; though it is for anything the application wants to keep around.

If the same file is used; then it could be reset regularly to keep space considerations from being a problem;
or even just rotate between a couple files in that location. There are things that could be done to mitigate the space issue.
 
> As logging is mainly for developers, using QDir::homePath() as the default 
> everywhere might be ok.

Home path might not be the best as it could intermingle with other files that belong to the user.

On *nix, QDir::homePath() that would be /home/<username> and users see that directory a lot, and it will get intermixed with other files.
On Windows, most users have no clue about %userprofile%, so its not an issue there.

$0.02

Ben