find standard logging strategy for dotnet

[Groostav]

This issue is to find ways we might easily instrument C# applications for logging information.

This information is useful because it should:

1. enable system testing against input/output
2. be usable in a functional-testing way
3. provide a facility for auditing and investigating problems.

[Groostav]

notes on logging frameworks:

0. I need a logging system I can use on ANSYS, Solidworks, and volition ref-client. We should default with warnings going to a file.
   • implicit here is that the whatever system logging system offers different levels (eg WARNING, ERROR, INFO, etc)
1. Microsoft has a paradigm other than std-err/std-out for logging. Theres "Debugging output", that both Debug.Writeline and Trace.Writeline append to.
   • key problem: these output channels do not impose "Warning" vs "Info" etc filtering. It also contains a bunch of unformatted GAC stuff which may simply be noise.
   • this output is only viewable from rider when you use the "debug" button. In visual studio, there is literally no other button.
   • In "release" configurations Debug.Writeline becomes a no-op.
   • Trace has a listeners concept which allows you to pipe it to files. see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/framework/debug-trace-profile/how-to-create-and-initialize-trace-listeners
     • also https://blog.submain.com/app-config-basics-best-practices/
   • It would seem that the "Settings.xml" strategy is Microsofts alternative to the familiar System.Properties in java space.
2. Regarding interceptors, it seems that Microsoft Unity has some features, but short of that there is no braindead strategy. Create dynamic proxies and add them yourself.
   • (recursively) for the API instances such that we can log all interactions with the ANSYS APIs.
   • GRPC instances also should be instrumented for inbound/outbound messages. In solidworks right now this is the TCPListeners + protobuf which is a problem
3. serilog seems very concerned with formatting and less concerned with runtime configuration. From what I can tell there is no file configuration.