Re: Resolution: only print specific error message when present

Greg Hudson wrote:
> In http://www.contactor.se/~dast/svn/archive-2003-11/0504.shtml Erik
> submitted a patch to print only the specific error message when
> present. This comes from my input to issue #897 back in June
> (http://www.contactor.se/~dast/svn/archive-2003-06/1342.shtml).
> Phillip tentatively objected to the patch, saying:
>
>>If repetition is such a crime, how about
>
>> svn: File not found
>> svn: 'foo'
[...]
> I am strongly in favor of the patch. With no other comments, it's
> hard to determine the sense of the community on this issue. So, speak
> up unless your apathy about this point is true and thorough. (Back in
> June, Branko agreed with the idea, but that's still only 3 to 1.
> Branden Robinson noted that a GUI might have use for both a general
> and specific error message, but we won't be reducing the amount of
> information available to the GUI, just the amount of information
> printed by the command-line client.)

I think: yes, this would make the error reports better, but it requires that all specific messages do in fact repeat the essence of the general text. I do not know whether Erik or anyone has checked that they do so, but I'd be willing to accept the risk that some messages might not be very good on their own. Some messages are not very good anyway, and we gradually find them, and fix them, so no change there really.

I would prefer to achieve the same end a different way, by making the generic errors parametric in a large number of cases, so that the text is not repeated in the program source at every instance. The effect would be a bit like Philip's example above, but neater ("svn: File not found: 'foo'"). However, this would be more work and Erik's patch will not impede any future effort to do this.

Therefore +1.

- Julian

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Received on Sun Dec 7 03:44:42 2003