For logback I have always wanted to have better control over the automatic initialization. That is I wish the automatic init followed something more similar to the ServiceLoader in Java: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/ServiceLoader.html That is a resource should be used to point to what code should do the initialization instead of having to use system properties or hijacking the already loaded config. Basically I want the auto configuration to load some Java code before it does the default which according to the manual is first load logback.groovy, then logback.xml, etc. I original asked this question on StackOverflow but after reading the documentation I think its a missing feature so I decided w/ the mailing list (apologies for crossposting). http://stackoverflow.com/questions/22335441/configure-logback-xml-to-defer-t... Cheers, -Adam -- CTO SnapHop (snaphop.com) (twitter) @agentgt (linkedin) http://www.linkedin.com/in/agentgt (cell) 781-883-5182