[erlang-questions] Quickcheck'ing a protocol

[Josh Adams]

So I've been frustrated lately by the fact that Slack's IRC gateway isn't
RFC 2812 compliant (https://github.com/bitwalker/exirc/issues/51)

In dealing with this I wondered why the crap they needed an engineer to go
through the spec as a result of their server's response to figure out that
this was an issue (they've added it to their bug tracker, so I have some
amount of faith it might get fixed eventually - for now I'll paper over the
issue in the client which reduces the stress on them to actually fix it
though).

Should RFCs / protocols of this nature just come with something like a
quickcheck model for their spec?  Is anyone aware of prior art around this
sort of thing aside from Quvic/Volvo that I could draw from if I wanted to
fiddle in this arena?

I'd think that the ideal situation involves an open source quickcheck
implementation to test a given protocol implementation against at least
some of the RFC, and a means to run the tests against potential
servers/clients, with badges potentially showing the percentage of the test
that passes.  This would allow economics to drive spec implementers towards
correctness, which would save countless engineer-hours spent figuring out
why the damn clients can't talk to the damn servers for a given spec.

Thoughts?  Pipe dream?  "Silly child, see A, B, and C for the many people
who are already doing this?"

-- 
Josh Adams
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