Configuration Manager a bit buggy
I’ve found that the Enterprise Library Configuration tool that comes with EntLib (I refer to it as the Configuration Manager) to be quite buggy. I’ve posted a few of my findings on the GotDotNet site for EntLib, but no response as of yet. I’m not even sure that’s where I should be posting bugs. One of the bugs deals with removing sections (nodes) from the tree view that are not actually removed from the underlying config file, so when you open the config file back up the nodes are still there.
The second bug is much more annoying though. When you set the logging distribution strategy to MSMQ and then remove the distributor settings (which are no longer needed since they are ignored and the ones set up for the the MSMQ service are used instead) then the Exception Handler block configuration has issues with the LogCategory property. It keeps getting reset when you open the Config files in the Configuration Manager, and without the MSMQDistributor.exe.config application also open in the tool you can’t set the LogCategory.
In my personal opinion I don’t think the Configuration Manager should look to validate the LogCategory property if it sees that the Logging Distribution Strategy is set to anything other than InProcess. The property should also be available to type a value into (now it wants to draw from a list of categories defined in the application or searches the other open applications in the tool for categories). This requires you to have both applications (the client and the MSMQDistributor.exe.config) open in the tool to get things set correctly and saved. But even with this, if you open them back up the values get blanked out again. Grrrrr….
These little things wouldn’t bother me as much except that I spent quite a LOT of time last week convincing my client that they need to move to EntLib for their new code. They finally bought into it, but now these little bugs with the configuration tool is making them wonder about the stability of the whole product. Not to mention some walk throughs are not up to date, or are just plain incorrect. The walk through to set up a custom sink was just completely wrong. A developer at the client was unable to use it to generate a custom sink. I found an example of one in the Tests directory for the logging and pointed that out to him to use as an example. The walk through for the custom exception handler was also not accurate as it apparently referred to a class name that had been changed at some point.
The documentation things should have been caught before delivery. The issue with the configuration tool with removing the nodes and the LogCategory should have also been very evident in tests. I’m frankly surprised they were missed. But don’t get me wrong, I still support the use of EntLib 100%.