I have a couple of design questions: 1. What is the fundamental reason that logs cannot be declared/defined with something as simple as boost::logging::log mylog ("mylog"); ? What special needs do you have that rule out this approach? (I took a brief look at the source code, got a vague idea what you were trying to accomplish, and have some ideas about how the same may be accomplished without resorting to macro's, but would like to hear your explanation and reasoning first.) 2. I am very skeptical about logs having both a C++ identifier and a string name. The documentation argues that the string names bring "extreme flexibility" in the following two ways: a: External identification While I agree that external identification may sometimes be useful to some users, is it really necessary to integrate it into the library? Would the users who require such functionality not be able to simply use something like a std::map<std::string, log *> ? b: Log hierarchies I do not question the usefulness of log hierarchies, but am not convinced that string names (and wildcard queries) are the best way to implement them. It seems to me that all that is needed to be able to form hierarchies of logs, is a way to express parent->child relationships between two logs. Indeed, something as simple as parent_log.append_child(child_log); should suffice. Wildcarded queries would simply become logs (or some sort of log-proxies) by themselves, that the user must manually connect to the desired sink logs. While this approach is slightly more cumbersome, I feel that getting rid of all the string name cruft is definitely a big win. What are your feelings about this? Regards, Eelis