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A number of points:
1. exc_text is not just an implementation detail - it's in the docs. Thus, removing the cache altogether would be backwards-incompatible.
2. The exc_text value is the only simple way of propagating the exception information across the wire, which is a common use case (e.g SocketHandler).
3. This is not a "behavior" issue, as the behaviour is by design and documented.
4. What's wrong with the following approach?
class NoStackTraceFormatter(logging.Formatter):
 def formatException(self, exc_info): # Don't emit the stack trace
 return '\n'.join(traceback.format_exception_only(exc_info[0], exc_info[1])) # type and value only
 def format(self, record):
 saved_exc_text = record.exc_text # optional
 record.exc_text = None
 result = super(NoStackTraceFormatter, self).format(record)
 record.exc_text = saved_exc_text # or None, if you want
 return result
You can either save and restore the previous exc_text value, or set it to None after the parent class operation - this will cause it to be always recomputed by the next handler. This way, a handler which needs abbreviated information always gets it, but other handlers append the full stack trace.
I'm closing this as I believe my suggestion shows a way of subclassing and overriding which works. You can re-open if you think I've missed something.