Coupling of CloudRuntime (ATHENS_CLOUD_RUNTIME) config var with log formatting is unexpected

[adamrothman]

Describe the bug
The only way to configure the formatter applied to Athens' logs is by setting the CloudRuntime / ATHENS_CLOUD_RUNTIME config var. The default value "none" configures unstructured text logging, which is undesirable outside of dev/debug contexts.

Error Message
N/A

To Reproduce
The maximal example config file here says:

# CloudRuntime is the Cloud Provider on which the Proxy/Registry is running.
# Currently available options are "GCP", or "none". Defaults to "none"
# Env override: ATHENS_CLOUD_RUNTIME
CloudRuntime = "none"

We don't run Athens in GCP, so we leave this as-is. When this value is "none", the logger setup code uses devFormatter:

athens/pkg/log/log.go

Lines 22 to 23 in d877af2

	case "none":
	l.Formatter = getDevFormatter()

This formatter outputs unstructured text, but we are running Athens in a production context and would like JSON logs to send to our ingest pipeline. I think can work around this by setting CloudRuntime = "anything else", but IMO this coupling is unintuitive.

Expected behavior
JSON logging should be configured by a dedicated config variable, independent of cloud provider.

Environment (please complete the following information):

• OS: Ubuntu 22.04 64-bit
• Go version: 1.22.0
• Proxy version: 0.13.1
• Storage (fs/mongodb/s3 etc.): S3

Additional context
N/A

[matt0x6F]

I agree this isn't the best way to configure a logger. Logrus' API isn't super complex, I think we could probably configure two additional environment variables that configure the logger more succinctly if this value is not set. Something like, ATHENS_LOG_FORMAT (plain/json) and (the existing setting) ATHENS_LOG_LEVEL.

Any other configuration that you think would be needed/appropriate?

[adamrothman]

Apologies for not replying sooner – your change looks great to me. Thank you!