Logging multiple instance application best practice?

Question

I finally tried log4net for my WPF desktop application.

I\'m struggling with the fact that RollingFileAppender has no built in support for multiple instance application

Answer 1

It's not a good idea to use multiple RollingFileAppender instances from different processes writing to the same file since the RollingFileAppender isn't designed for that scenario.

You have a couple of choices here:

Multiple FileAppender with minimal locking

Use multiple FileAppender instances pointing at the same file and configured with minimal locking. This will allow concurrent write operations from multiple processes:

Multiple EventLogAppender

Use multiple EventLogAppender instances that write to a shared Windows event source:

Of course you could also send the log to a database or to a remote component running in a different process or even a different machine but these choices require more infrastructure to be setup so it may be overkill for your scenario.

Related resources:

• log4net Config Examples