Subject: Re: bug#76875: 30.1; ERC 5.6.0.30.1: ERC logging doesn't include calendar dates anymore

From: "J.P." <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2025 19:08:19 -0700

Hi,

[email-masked] writes:

> ERC logs on my local disk do not contain the calendar date strings
> anymore.  Before, I was using ERC that was included in emacs 29.4, and
> that version of ERC used to include a calendar date timestamp on the
> logs whenever I login to IRC networks and rooms using ERC.  That string
> used to be of the form: [Thu Feb 27 2025].  But, again, since updating
> to emacs 30.1 on debian bookworm-backports, that calendar string date
> stopped being included to my local text log files.

I was indeed able to reproduce this. In the future, please try to
include an informal recipe that mentions any configuration needed to
trigger the issue, such as the following:

  1. $ HOME=$(mktemp -d) emacs -Q
  2. (require 'erc)
     (setopt erc-log-write-after-insert t)
     (push 'log erc-modules)
  3. M-x erc RET ... RET
  4. /join #test
  5. M-x eshell RET
  6. $ head $HOME/log/*

In any case, this issue has hopefully been fixed on master:

  https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/emacs.git/commit/?id=3db65ff5

In terms of workarounds for Emacs 30.1, you can either forgo customizing
`erc-log-write-after-insert' in the first place (recommended) or set the
deprecated variable `erc-stamp-prepend-date-stamps-p' to t.

> This "bug" is quite annoying because due to it, I can no longer
> discern in my local logs to which date the IRC messages belong.

Yes, apologies for the annoyance.

As for addressing this on Emacs 30.2, I'm not sure whether back porting
is something we'll want to do. On the one hand, this bug causes people
to lose information they likely regard as valuable, and it does so for
anyone who's customized `erc-log-write-after-insert' in the past twenty
odd years. On the other hand, ERC's next ELPA release, 5.6.1, will be
out shortly, so people on 5.6.0.30.1 can (in theory) upgrade. If you
have an opinion on the matter, please share.

Thanks.