Hello all, While working on chapter 11, migration of log4j appenders to logback-classic, it occured to me that the current way AppenderBase implements its layout setter and getter can be confusing. Here is the relevant code: abstract public class AppenderBase<E> extends ContextAwareBase implements Appender<E> { public Layout<E> getLayout() { return null; } public void setLayout(Layout<E> layout) { } // omitted code } The fact that the setLayout does nothing and getLayout always returns null is somethat unexpected and may suprise users. This has apparently already happended to Thilo Tanner as reported in LBCORE-56. See also http://jira.qos.ch/browse/LBCORE-56 I'd like to change AppenderBase to: abstract public class AppenderBase<E> extends ContextAwareBase implements Appender<E> { Layout<E> layout; public Layout<E> getLayout() { return layout; } public void setLayout(Layout<E> layout) { this.layout = layout; } // omitted code } The new code offers a reasonable default implementation for layout getter and setter methods. It should decrease the aforementioned surprise factor without causing harm to many appender implementations which do not need a layout. Comments? -- Ceki Gülcü Logback: The reliable, generic, fast and flexible logging framework for Java. http://logback.qos.ch