NLog 4.5 is near! (and no NLog 5 for now)

20 Dec 2017

With the releases of NLog 4.5 RC, a RTM release is near!

NLog 4.5 adds support for various platforms (.NET Standard 1.5+, .NET Standard 2 and UWP - This also means .NET Core!) and adds structured logging!

Summary of the most important changes in NLog 4.5:

Features:

  • Support for .Net Standard 1.5 #2341
  • Support for .Net Standard 2.0 #2263 + #2402
  • Support for UWP #2441 (Remember to manually flush on app suspend).
  • Introduced Structured logging #2208 + #2262 + #2244
  • Default file archive logic is now easier to use #1993
  • Introduced InstallationContext.ThrowExceptions #2214
  • WebServiceTarget - Allow configuration of proxy address #2375
  • Json conversion also supports object properties #2179
  • event-properties layout-renderer can now render objects as json #2241
  • exception layout-renderer can now render exceptions as json #2357
  • ${guid}, added GeneratedFromLogEvent #2226
  • TraceTarget RawWrite to always perform Trace.WriteLine independent of LogLevel #1968
  • Adding OverflowAction options to BufferingTargetWrapper #2276
  • WhenRepeatedFilter #2123 + #2297
  • ${callsite} added CleanNamesOfAsyncContinuations option #2292
  • ${ndlctiming} allows timing of ndlc-scopes #2377
  • NLogViewerTarget - Enable override of the Logger-name #2390
  • ${sequenceid} added #2411
  • Added “regex-matches” for filtering #2437

BugFixes:

  • Improved archive stability during concurrent file access #1889
  • FallbackGroup could lose log events #2265
  • Exception separator should only be inserted for available items #2250
  • ${exception} - only include separator when items are available #2257
  • LogFactory - Fixes broken EventArgs for ConfigurationChanged #1897
  • Do not report wrapped targets as unused targets #2290
  • Added IIncludeContext, implemented missing properties #2117
  • Improved logging of callsite linenumber for async-methods #2386
  • NLogTraceListener - DisableFlush is enabled by default when AutoFlush=true #2407
  • NLogViewer - Better defaults for connection limits #2404
  • LoggingConfiguration.LoggingRules is not thread safe #2393, #2418

Performance:

  • More targets has OptimizeBufferReuse enabled by default #1913 + #1923 + #1912 + #1911 + #1910 + #1909 + #1908 + #1907
  • StringBuilderPool - Improved Layout Render Performance by reusing StringBuilders #2208
  • JsonLayout - Improved Layout Performance, by optimizing use of StringBuilder #2208
  • FileTarget - Faster byte-encoding of log messsages, by using crude Encoding.GetMaxByteCount() instead of exact Encoding.GetByteCount() #2208
  • Target - Precalculate Layout should ignore sub-layouts for complex layout (Ex Json) #2378

What happend to NLog 5?

We started with NLog 5 almost two years ago, at the time of DNX and dotnet5.4. Fast forward: the branch we were building on is heavily diverged and we were maintaining two versions of NLog! (NLog 4 and NLog 5). Almost every file had been changed in NLog 5 and with multiple migrations (DNX, project.json, csproj) and it was clear that merging the NLog 5 branch into master was too tricky!

With the completion of .NET Standard 2, it was easier to move to the new platforms (including .NET standard 1) in smaller steps and we have ported the most important stuff to NLog 4.5

This means that NLog 4.5 will have the support for the platforms added in NLog 5, thus making NLog 5 obsolete!

The best part, there are no breaking changes between NLog 4.x and NLog 4.5! (we take semver very serious!)

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