How to debug Apache mod_rewrite

Question

I have two main problems with mod_rewrite:

1) There is no meaningful error reported when I have an invalid rule

Answer 1

Based on Ben's answer you you could do the following when running apache on Linux (Debian in my case).

First create the file rewrite-log.load

/etc/apache2/mods-availabe/rewrite-log.load

RewriteLog "/var/log/apache2/rewrite.log"
RewriteLogLevel 3

Then enter

$ a2enmod rewrite-log

followed by

$ service apache2 restart

And when you finished with debuging your rewrite rules

$ a2dismod rewrite-log && service apache2 restart