Introduction

Sawmill is an alternative to the standard Python logging library

Its goals are to be simple and consistent in approach as well as making it easier to customise behaviour even at a low level. However, it does draw several concepts from the standard library so hopefully it will all appear vaguely familiar.

Here are some examples of how Sawmill differs:

• No explicit hierarchy of loggers. All handlers have the opportunity to handle every message by default. However, using the Distribute handler you can construct your own handler hierarchy if you want.
• Log levels are not treated specially. Instead you can filter based on log level by adding a Level filterer to your handlers.
• There is a clearer contract between formatters and handlers. This simplifies having a formatter that produces an email with a handler that actually sends the mail.
• No passing of format arguments to log calls. Format messages using either standard Python string formatting or a dedicated Formatter that acts on the whole log.
• Filterers and formatters are only defined for handlers so it is clearer where to use them (though potentially more restrictive).
• The system handles batches of logs by default making it simple to buffer logs and generate summary messages.
• Easy to change the root handler (sawmill.root).
• Requires Python 2.6 or higher.
• Follows PEP8.