RFC: "event" logging

[Paul Hoffman]

I'd like to add simple logging of important "events" in screen (a new
window is created, the user switches to another window, the session is
detached, etc.).  Before I start coding, I'm wondering if anyone else is
interested in this or has comments.

Here's a rough cut at documentation additions:

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COMMAND-LINE OPTIONS
       -E file
            turn on automatic event logging to the given file.  See the
            EVENT LOGGING chapter and the "eventlog" .screenrc command
            for details.

DEFAULT KEY BINDINGS
       C-a E         Begins/ends event logging.

CUSTOMIZATION
       eventlog [on|off]

       Turn event logging on or off.  Event logging is off by default.

       eventlogfile filename

       Specify the file to which events are logged.  A small subset of
       string escapes may be used in the filename argument to divide
       event logging among several files:

       S      session name
       n      window number
       d      day number
       D      day name
       Y      full year number
       m      month number
       M      month name

       eventlogtstamp [on|off]
       eventlogtstamp string [string]

       This command controls the event logfile time-stamp mechanism of
       screen.  If time-stamps  are  turned  "on" (the default),  screen
       adds a string containing the current time at the beginning of
       each line it writes to the event logfile.  The second form is
       used for customizing the time-stamp string (`%Y-%m-%dT%0c:%s' by
       %default).  

EVENT LOGGING

       If event logging is turned on (via the -E option or the
       "eventlog" command), a message will be written to the specified
       file each time any one of several significant events takes place.

       The events are logged using the following printf(1) formats:

       session %s begun
       session %s detached
       session %s attached by user %s
       session %s renamed: %s
       session %s ended
       window %d begun: %s
       window %d unfocused
       window %d focused
       window %s renamed: %s
       window %s ended

       Each message is preceded by a timestamp in the form
       YYYY-mm-ddTHH:MM:SS (the "eventlogtstamp" command may be used to
       turn this off or customize the timestamp format).

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Looking at the code, this doesn't seem to be too hard to add (famous
last words).  My one worry is that splitting event logging among
multiple files is too complicated; perhaps it would be best to just log
everything in a single file.  And there should be a default
eventlogfile, but I haven't thought that through yet.

Thanks,

Paul.

-- 
Paul Hoffman <address@hidden>