The Apache Log4j 2 team is pleased to announce the Log4j 2.0-beta9 release!

Apache log4j is a well known framework for logging application behavior. Log4j 2 is an upgrade to
Log4j that provides significant improvements over its predecessor, Log4j 1.x, and provides
many of the improvements available in Logback while fixing some inherent problems in Logback's
architecture.

This is the eleventh release of Log4j 2 and is being made available to encourage use and feedback from the community.

Bug fixes and enhancements

New features:

  • LOG4J2-399: Allow the default file rollover strategy to define the compression level.
  • LOG4J2-338: Add TLSAppender. Also added missing license headers to several files. Thanks to Tibor Benke.
  • LOG4J2-253: Added FAQ page to the site.
  • LOG4J2-362: Add a diagram to the site (FAQ page) that explains when to use which jar.
  • LOG4J2-374: Add more options to PatternLayout to display more detailed information about a Throwable. Thanks to Tibor Benke.
  • LOG4J2-383: [Pattern Layout] Customize level names by length.
  • LOG4J2-384: [Pattern Layout] Customize level names to lower-case.
  • LOG4J2-364: Add WebLookup to retrieve information from the ServletContext. Thanks to David Nault.
  • LOG4J2-360: Allow Plugins to have aliases.
  • LOG4J2-356: Create a JSON Layout.
  • LOG4J2-341: Enable XInclude for XML configurations.
  • LOG4J2-313: Add JNDILookup plugin. Thanks to Woonsan Ko.
  • LOG4J2-305: Ease porting from 1.x Logger.getRootLogger(): add LogManager.getRootLogger().

Fixed Bugs:

  • LOG4J2-226: Fix table of contents generation in pdf.
  • LOG4J2-395: Allow classpath scheme when specifying configuration file location as a system property. Thanks to Abhinav Shah.
  • LOG4J2-393: Initialize PluginManager once during configuration. Move advertisement setup into BaseConfiguration.
  • LOG4J2-391: FlumePersistentManager now handles LockConflictExceptions in Berkeley Db. Thanks to Kamal Bahadur.
  • LOG4J2-380: Use rollover date when substituting ${date} in the filePattern.
  • LOG4J2-322: Centralized reflective use of Reflection#getCallerClass and properly handled its instability in various versions
    of Java.
  • LOG4J2-293: Reset the Configuration if the ClassLoaderContextSelector creates a LoggerContext without a configuration
    location and then is later provided one.
  • LOG4J2-293: Changed the ConfigurationFactory to recognize and properly use the classpath: URI scheme in addition to the
    classloader: URI scheme. Thanks to Abhinav Shah.
  • LOG4J2-359: Changed the Servlet 3.0 auto-initializer so that it does nothing in a Servlet 2.5 or older application. This
    ensures behavioral consistency across containers. Thanks to Abhinav Shah.
  • LOG4J2-310: Fixed issue where SMTPAppender did not send mails with error or fatal level without prior info event. Thanks to Olivier Lemasle.
  • LOG4J2-368: Add PatternLayout constructor to Log4j 1.2 bridge for Velocity.
  • LOG4J2-333: Match artifact ids with Maven module names. Thanks to Hervé Boutemy.
  • LOG4J2-367: JMS appenders send two messages for one append. Thanks to David Parry.
  • LOG4J2-319: Double stack trace logging when using %throwable in %style and %highlight.
  • LOG4J2-358: NoSQLAppender using MongoDB provider ignores username and password attributes
  • LOG4J2-343: Removed unnecessary generics from Appender interface and implementing classes. Thanks to Henning Schmiedehausen.
  • LOG4J2-351: [OSGi] wrong Fragment-Host in manifest files. Thanks to Roland Weiglhofer.
  • LOG4J2-336: AsyncLogger errors after multiple calls to LoggerContext.reconfigure(). Thanks to Andre Bogus.
  • LOG4J2-347: Give the AsyncAppender thread a more descriptive name for easier debugging/profiling. Thanks to David Phillips.
  • LOG4J2-332: Modified documentation to refer to SLF4J Binding instead of SLF4J Bridge. Thanks to Hervé Boutemy.
  • LOG4J2-342: Ignore xml:base attributes.
  • LOG4J2-309: Insure jars and distributions only have a single License and Notice file.
  • LOG4J2-320: JPAAppender stops logging because META-INF/log4j-provider.properties is left open.
  • LOG4J2-335: FlumePersistentManager's writer thread had high CPU usage.
  • LOG4J2-331: Removed erroneous check for affected MongoDB records, which always returns zero on inserts.
  • LOG4J2-330: Added a BSON Transformer so that MongoDB can persist Log4j events.
  • LOG4J2-329: StatusLogger now only creates StatusData objects if they are the appropriate logging level.
  • LOG4J2-328: FlumePersistentManager was calling Berkeley DB's count method too frequently.
  • LOG4J2-280: Additional fix to make AsyncAppender threads daemon threads and improve their thread name.
  • LOG4J2-165: The slf4j-ext jar is now an optional dependency of the SLF4J bridge.
  • LOG4J2-166: RoutingAppender's default Route can now be an appender reference.
  • LOG4J2-299: Add getThrowable method to ThrowableProxy.
  • LOG4J2-216: ThrowableProxy no longer extends Throwable.
  • LOG4J2-311: Synchronized flush() and close() methods in the XxxFileManager and OutputStreamManager classes.
  • LOG4J2-304: Fixed Async Loggers memory leak.
  • LOG4J2-291: Fixed JDBC, JPA, and NoSQL appenders so that the failover appender properly fails over on error.
  • LOG4J2-397: Logger.info(Message) Javadoc is incorrect. Thanks to Yonatan Graber.

Changes:

  • LOG4J2-317: Renamed FastFileAppender and FastRollingFileAppender to RandomAccessFileAppender
    and RollingRandomAccessFileAppender. Configurations using the Fast(Rolling)File element
    no longer work and should be modified to use the (Rolling)RandomAccessFile element.
  • Changed the "suppressExceptions" configuration attribute for all Appenders to "ignoreExceptions" to avoid
    confusion with Java 7 suppressed exceptions. Also renamed the Appender#isExceptionSuppressed() method to
    Appender#ignoreExceptions() to avoid the same confusion. All Appenders by default internally log and then ignore
    exceptions encountered while logging. Setting "ignoreExceptions" to "false" on an Appender causes it to allow
    exceptions to propagate to the caller. You must set "ignoreExceptions" to "false" for Appenders you are wrapping
    in the Failover Appender.
  • Changed the (relatively new) PatternLayout configuration attribute "suppressExceptions" to
    "alwaysWriteExceptions" to more correctly indicate what it does. As such, the meaning of this attribute has
    reversed (previous "true"s should become "false"s, and vice versa). Since this was an undocumented attribute up
    until now, it's unlikely this change will affect any users.
  • LOG4J2-355: Add support for multiple SD-ELEMENTs in a RFC 5424 syslog message. Thanks to Tibor Benke.
  • Cleaned up tests and cleared up documentation for the JPA appender following the resolution of EclipseLink
    issue #412454.
  • LOG4J2-318: Allow shutdown hook to be disabled in the configuration.
  • LOG4J2-312: XML layout improvements (compact vs. pretty, namespace, namespace prefix, root element).
  • LOG4J2-388: Update Java Mail dependency to 1.5.0 from 1.4.7.
  • LOG4J2-325: Update JDBC tests to use H2 database 1.3.173 from 1.3.172.
  • LOG4J2-366: Update commons-logging to 1.1.3 from 1.1.1.
  • LOG4J2-390: Update HSQLDB dependency to 2.3.0 from 2.2.9.
  • LOG4J2-308: Clarified which library versions were used in Async Loggers performance test.
  • LOG4J2-307: Updated Async Loggers' LMAX Disruptor library from 3.0.1 to 3.2.0.
  • LOG4J2-306: Update JSON Jackson library to 2.2.2 from 2.2.1.
  • LOG4J2-387: Update Jackson dependency to 1.9.13 from 1.9.11.
  • Improved site by adding quick jump-off page and menu for Javadoc links for all components.

Apache Log4j 2.0-beta9 requires a minimum of Java 6 to build and run. Basic compatibility with
Log4j 1.x is provided through the log4j-1.2-api component, however it does not implement some of the
very implementation specific classes and methods. The package names and Maven groupId have been changed to
org.apache.logging.log4j to avoid any conflicts with log4j 1.x.

For complete information on Apache Log4j 2, including instructions on how to submit bug reports,
patches, or suggestions for improvement, see the Apache Apache Log4j 2 website:

http://logging.apache.org/log4j/2.x/