Replacing brski http library with one with better logs/error handling

[aloisklink]

The brski CLI is extremely difficult to debug if anything goes wrong.

For example, I've encountered errors like:

2023-06-20 01:38:04.961  ERROR httplib_wrapper.cpp:251: httplib::Client fail with "Success"

I've also encountered times where the brski CLI seems to crash, but there are no logs, and brski returns 0 (aka SUCCESS) instead of an error exit code.

It seems like most of these issues are caused by the lack of error handling/logging capabilities in the HTTP library that brski uses: cpp-httplib.

cpp-httplib seems like a simple and easy-to-use library, but it doesn't have good error handling capabilities. In my opinion, we need to replace the http library used by brski to a different library, or even spin up our own HTTP handling.

Potential HTTP library replacements

Server-side

• Drogon
  • This seems to be the most popular modern C++ http library.
  • Fastest C++ http library, according to https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21&hw=ph&test=composite
  • Requires C++14, and will soon require C++17
  • Supports C++20 coroutines
    (equivalent to JavaScript Promises/await/async)
  • No debian package in Ubuntu 22.04, but maybe soon in debian/unstable.
  • MIT license
• Qt Network
  • @TobyEalden is experienced with this
  • Debian package available in Ubuntu 22.04, see libqt6network6.
  • LGPL v3.0 license
• Lithium
  • Very fast, (3rd fastest C++ library according to https://www.techempower.com/benchmarks/#section=data-r21&hw=ph&test=composite)
  • Very user-friendly, which is potentially a down-side, since it might be lacking
    features
  • Requires C++17
  • No debian package in Ubuntu 22.04
  • MIT license

Client-side

• cpr
  • C++17 wrapper around libcurl
  • No debian package in Ubuntu 22.04
  • MIT License