Question

I have two projects configured identically for log4net. One project logs fine; however, the other does not log at all.

The Logger in the project that is not logging returns IsFatalEnabled = false, IsErrorEnabled = false, IsWarnEnabled = false, IsInforEnabled = false and IsDebugEnabled = false.

I’ve copied and pasted from one project to the other, replaced the file completely and tried removing all whitespace.

What could be causing the one project not to properly be reading the correct levels from the app.config?

app.config:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <configSections>
    <section name="log4net" type="log4net.Config.Log4NetConfigurationSectionHandler, log4net" />
  </configSections>
  <log4net>
    <appender name="FileAppender" type="log4net.Appender.FileAppender">
      <file value="logfile.txt" />
      <appendToFile value="true" />
      <layout type="log4net.Layout.PatternLayout">
        <conversionPattern value="%date: %-5level – %message%newline" />
      </layout>
    </appender>
    <root>
      <level value="DEBUG" />
      <appender-ref ref="FileAppender" />
    </root>
  </log4net>
</configuration>

Program.cs

using log4net;

class Program
{
    private static readonly ILog Log = LogManager.GetLogger("SO");

    static void Main(string[] args)
    {
        Log.Info("SO starting");
    }
}

Answer 1

It seems that the app.config file was not configured to be watched by log4net.

I added the following line to AssemblyInfo.cs and logging is now enabled:

[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(Watch = true)]

Weird, since I didn’t add this line to the the project that was working.

EDIT:

Looks like the project that was working did have the line after all. I must have forgotten.

// This will cause log4net to look for a configuration file 
// called [ThisApp].exe.config in the application base 
// directory (i.e. the directory containing [ThisApp].exe) 
// The config file will be watched for changes. 
[assembly: log4net.Config.XmlConfigurator(Watch = true)]