@theller: Although your use case just covers using basicConfig, I can
just see users expecting the same mechanism to invoke configuration
stored in a logging configuration file, which is why I suggested the
config= variant. However, doughellmann raises the valid point of what
the semantics would be if the program you invoke via logging -m does its
own configuration.

With a simple implementation: If a script calls basicConfig after it has
been invoked with logging -m etc. then the basicConfig call won't do
anything, as if the root logger already has some handlers, the call is
essentially a no-op. If the called script loads a configuration file,
that will overwrite the configuration specified via logging -m.

Either way, it's not consistent IMO - sometimes the logging -m
configuration will seem to win, and other times, the called script's
configuration.

Of course, it could be argued that logging -m is intended for scripts
which don't do explicit configuration - I'm not sure of how strong an
argument this is.

Thinking caps on :-)