[webkit-dev] Upcoming changes to WebKit's logging functionality

[Mark Rowe]

As part of improving WebKit's logging subsystem on OS X (<https://webkit.org/b/119031>) I'm refactoring the code in WebCore, WebKit and WebKit2 that initializes logging channels. I'm doing this to reduce the need to touch several different pieces of code in order to add a new logging channel, and so that more of the initialization code can be shared across platforms. The result of this is that all ports will now share a common syntax for the string specifying which logging channels to enable.

Logging channels may now be enabled by providing a comma-separated list of channel names, with the special "all" name enabling all channels. Channel names prefixed with a leading "-" will result in the named channel being disabled. For instance, specifying "all,-history,-loading" will result in all logging channels except for history and loading being enabled.

For OS X developers, this will also change the name of the user defaults used to enable logging. This is done to allow the old user defaults to remain set for those people that need to switch between version of WebKit before and after this change. Where the old user default keys were WebCoreLogLevel, WebKitLogLevel and WebKit2LogLevel, the new user default keys are WebCoreLogging, WebKitLogging and WebKit2Logging.

For developers of other ports, the syntax used to enable logging channels may change for you. Some ports had been using a space-separated list of channel names rather than a comma-separated list. Please let me know if you feel that this change will cause you pain. I've made a best-effort attempt to keep other ports compiling, but since my brain only supports a subset of C++11 it's likely that I've introduced some build breakages. The EWS appears to build with logging disabled so I've not been able to use it for testing this change. I'd appreciate it if maintainers of other ports could take a few minutes to check whether the most recent patch attached to <https://webkit.org/b/119031> builds on their platform and let me know if it works or what needs to be fixed.

I'll be holding off on landing these changes for a few days to gives folks an opportunity to provide feedback. I’ll also be keeping an eye on the bots after I land the change in case I do happen to break any builds.

Thanks,

- Mark

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