What is tracing and how should it be done?

Question

What is tracing and how should it be done?

I have a common utilities library I am including in my projects and I want to be able to get some output from it. I have been using log4net but would rather not have my common utilities library dependent upon log4net. Does that make sense?

Edit: Is there any correlation between logging and tracing? Would I want to put tracing and logging into the same stream for some reason?

Should I perhaps replace some of the log4net Logger.Debug(..) I have in my projects with System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine(..)s?

Answer 1

Here are some blog posts by Mike Rousos of the .NET BCL team:

• A Tracing Primer – Part I - is a simple introduction to the tracing APIs.
• A Tracing Primer – Part II (A) - talks mainly about filtering events
• A Tracing Primer – Part II (B) - talks about developing custom trace listeners (plugins that will channel your trace events to wherever you desire).
• A Tracing Primer – Part II (C) - talks about how the configuration files are interpreted.