I agree, writing (and arguably configuring) robust logging libraries isn't much fun, and not easy to do yourself.

So, don't. Ship the logs as quickly and as simply to a system which is explicitly for log management.

The choice isn't between writing huge logging libraries or using log4j, it's whether you want an application to handle its own flat-file logging and rotation in the first place.

Java has always been obnoxiously complex to steer towards sane, basic, modern syslog, which I think is a shame.