IRC Raw Log

[half-duplex]

Summary

Troubleshooting issues with IRC connectivity would be easier with raw log functionality.

Background

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe:

I'm currently having issues with the bot connecting to the server but not joining the channel.

Describe the solution you'd like:

The ability to have the bot log every IRC message it sends or receives.

>> 'PRIVMSG #otv :<Acid> Hello!\r\n'
<< ':[email protected] PRIVMSG #otv :Hey, you!\r\n`

Anything like -rawlog, -debug TRACE, -debug -debug -debug, or a IRC_RAW_LOG=/tmp/foo.log config variable would be great.

Describe alternatives you've considered:

• Not all servers allow unencrypted connections, so using that and tcpdump/tshark/wireshark isn't an ideal solution.

• Not everybody knows how to strip TLS using socat, and doing so is annoying, so that's not an ideal solution.

Therefore, I think a flag to print every IRC message sent or received is the lowest-effort way to enable easier debugging of IRC issues.

Details

I've tried using -debug, but it hasn't helped me figure out why the bot isn't joining the channel. It would be great if it could give more information without needing a rawlog, but I'm not sure how to generalize that well.

Outcome

Users can easily have the bot log all raw IRC messages to a file or stdout.

[jwflory]

We have a robust logger already. It should be possible to extend this to messages as well. It would make debugging easier in many cases.