Missing log4cxx on latest ros_comm

Question

With the latest release of ros_comm (1.9.52) and roscpp_core (0.3.17), the dependency on log4cxx has been removed. This breaks a couple of very old packages that relied on log4cxx being the underlying implementation of ros logging.

So far I've seen this show up in the Hokuyo driver: https://github.com/ros-drivers/hokuyo_node/issues/7 and in the PR2 Ethercat Driver: https://github.com/PR2/pr2_ethercat_drivers/issues/62

In both cases, the node in question is using log4cxx calls to adjust the verbosity of the underlying logger: https://github.com/PR2/pr2_ethercat_drivers/blob/hydro-devel/ethercat_hardware/src/motorconf.cpp#L642-L643 https://github.com/ros-drivers/hokuyo_node/blob/hydro-devel/src/getFirmwareVersion.cpp#L56

I don't see any recommendations on how to adjust the logger levels from C++ on the roscpp logging or the rosconsole wiki pages. While adding a log4cxx configuration file is suggested, it's a system-wide change that isn't viable for this sort of single-executable logging adjustment, and probably isn't compatible with the non-log4cxx logging backends.

Is there a recommendation on how migrate these calls to the new backed-agnostic logging?

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Originally posted by ahendrix on ROS Answers with karma: 47576 on 2014-01-09

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by AHornung on 2014-01-09:
The real question is: why is such a breaking change introduced in the released distribution which should only receive non-breaking bugfixes?

Comment by Dirk Thomas on 2014-01-09:
This is not a breaking change. The above described code is using log4cxx without depending and including log4cxx explicitly. Relying on transitive dependencies is not stable and by no means guaranteed. If the code would state its dependency on log4cxx correctly it can continue as it is (and use the log4cxx log level enum directly rathern then trying to resolve it via an internal global variable which is not part of the public API).

Comment by ahendrix on 2014-01-10:
This is an API-breaking change because you're removing variables from the public headers: https://github.com/ros/ros_comm/commit/4225dd5b528b3f977a1e3ecc4924c9f267071530

Answer 1

You might consider using the function used by the get/set logger level RPCs:

ros::console::set_logger_level(...)

But you have to explicitly invoke ros::console::notifyLoggerLevelsChanged() when logger levels have been successfully set in order for them to be applied.

Update:

The removed symbol has been readded in https://github.com/ros/ros_comm/pull/336 But the missing explicit dependency is still something all affected packages will have to address.

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Originally posted by Dirk Thomas with karma: 16276 on 2014-01-09

This answer was ACCEPTED on the original site

Post score: 1

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Original comments

Comment by ahendrix on 2014-01-09:
Update: I REALLY don't like this solution, because it doesn't compile against the previous version of rosconsole in Hydro, because the set_logger_level function isn't public. I'm going to agree with @AHornung that this is a breaking change. It should be reverted in Hydro and delayed to Igloo.

Comment by ahendrix on 2014-01-15:
Final solution, using the re-added symbol here: https://github.com/PR2/pr2_ethercat_drivers/compare/1.8.5...1.8.7