The trace level was added to log4j in version 1.2.12 released on August 29, 2005. The trace level was added to the SLF4J API in version 1.4.0 on May 16th, 2007. Thus, starting with SLF4J 1.4.0, the log4j binding for SLF4J requires log4j version 1.2.12 or above.
However, as reported in issue 59, in some environments it may be difficult to upgrade the log4j version. To accommodate such circumstances, SLF4J's Log4jLoggerAdapter
will map the TRACE level as DEBUG.