Bug#666263: ITP: log4shib -- log4j-style configurable logging library for C++

[Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>]

Package: wnpp
Severity: wishlist
Owner: Russ Allbery <rra@debian.org>

This ITP probably needs some additional discussion. log4shib is a fork
of log4cpp (as described in the long description below) that is the
recommended logging library for the Shibboleth web authentication project.
Shibboleth is already packaged for Debian (xmltooling, opensaml2, and
shibboleth-sp2 source packages) and is currently built against log4cpp.
However, log4shib is actively maintained (log4cpp appears to be dormant)
and has bug fixes and thread safety fixes not present in the current
log4cpp.

I'm hesitant to introduce this sort of code duplication in the archive,
but I think this will result in a more robust and higher quality set of
Shibboleth packages.  The Shibboleth maintainers also maintain log4shib
actively, and while there hasn't been a new release of it since 2009 (the
last log4cpp release was in 2007), that's only because no new bugs for the
functionality that Shibboleth uses have cropped up.

Shibboleth upstream has submitted the fixes and changes to the log4cpp
tracker and some have been applied in their CVS and some changed in
other ways (that the Shibboleth upstream didn't have time to evaluate),
but no actual release has happened since that work.  (One of the issues
that Shibboleth upstream had, not directly relevant to Debian, was lack
of testing on Solaris and support on Windows.)

I'd be very interested to hear comments on this, particularly if, for
instance, the security team is concerned.  The package would be
introduced for the use of Shibboleth; I don't know of any other clients
of the library.

Regular ITP details follow:

* Package name    : log4shib
  Version         : 1.0.4
  Upstream Author : Scott Cantor
* URL             : https://wiki.shibboleth.net/confluence/display/OpenSAML/log4shib
* License         : LGPL 2.1
  Programming Lang: C++
  Description     : log4j-style configurable logging library for C++

log4shib provides a library of C++ classes for flexible logging to
files, syslog, and other destinations.  It is modeled after the log4j
Java library, staying as close to that API as is reasonable.

log4shib is a fork of the log4cpp library with additional fixes and
modifications to improve its thread safety and robustness.  It is
primarily intended for use by the Shibboleth web authentication
system.