log to stdout?

[wenzowski]

Highly recommend logging to STDOUT by default, in keeping with the principles of the 12 factor app

Would a migration from log4js to visionmedia/debug be realistic?

I'd also like to point out that since debug is already used by many of your dependencies, including, but not limited to, connect and express the ability to toggle log levels by module is extremely useful.

Quick summary of all of all dependencies which use debug can be found by inspecting their package.json declarations (snippet uses ggreer/the_silver_searcher):

ag -G package.json '"debug"' node_modules/

[KnowledgeGarden]

Frankly, this looks interesting, but...
Does it persist exceptions and traces before them to actual log files in order to figure out what bombed during production runs?

[wenzowski]

indeed. Persisting logs is crucial. Given you're using ubuntu, the standard bash stream redirection syntax works in upstart jobs:

exec node server.js >> /var/log/TQPortal/web-1.log 2>&1

A great way to generate upstart (and other process monitor config files) is using node-forman.