Python logging before you run logging.basicConfig?

You can remove the default handlers and reconfigure logging like this:

# if someone tried to log something before basicConfig is called, Python creates a default handler that
# goes to the console and will ignore further basicConfig calls. Remove the handler if there is one.
root = logging.getLogger()
if root.handlers:
    for handler in root.handlers:
        root.removeHandler(handler)
logging.basicConfig(format="%(asctime)s %(message)s",level=logging.DEBUG)