Expose configFromEnv as a public method

[ribasushi]

There is a legitimate use-case to be able to examine the result of configFromEnv from an external caller. See discussion here for details: filecoin-project/lotus#6743 (comment)

[elijaharita]

i second this. i'd like to be able to look at which, if any, subsystems have logging enabled, and their levels.

my use case wants a few things -

1. i'd like to conditionally enable the subsystem information on log lines only if there are multiple subsystems enabled aside from my app's main logger.
2. i want to set my app's main logger to INFO log level by default through code, but still allow the user to configure it through env (currently it does a hard-overwrite of the env config for the subsystem, so it becomes unconfigurable for the user)
3. i want to implement subsystem groups, which would control a predefined set of subsystems without forcing the user to configure each one manually. this doesn't need special support from go-log, it could be accomplished by creating a dummy subsystem, whose log level would be inspected, and applied to a set of other dependent subsystems. it would need this feature, though

i would be willing to contribute a pr for this if i can get a green light^^

[ribasushi]

i would be willing to contribute a pr for this if i can get a green light^^

@elijaharita just checked with maintainers: you have a 🍏🚦to PR, let's do it!

[elijaharita]

@ribasushi okay, proposal, here we go

we can leave configFromEnv inside of init() to avoid breaking existing code. instead, we would save the config to a private global variable upon running SetupLogging(). we would have a public function GetConfig() return a copy of the config. the library user would then simply read the copy for their purposes, and/or modify that copy and subsequently call SetupLogging() again to apply their config changes.

pretty simple but it gives the library user a ton more control without breaking anything. what u think?

[ribasushi]

modify that copy and subsequently call SetupLogging() again to apply their config changes.

This is dicey... do you really need this?
The rest sounds good!

[elijaharita]

great! as for dicey, how so? do you have an alternative idea for allowing the user to update config with code?

[elijaharita]

actually, calling SetupLogging again could be done in the library's current state too. is there even a way to configure the logger if not like that? @ribasushi

[ribasushi]

I re-read your requirements, I missed the requirement to write at runtime ( 2 )
So yeah, ignore my concern, all good!

[aschmahmann]

@elijaharita is this closed by #129?