Re: [PATCH] include error codes in error messages

On Feb 7, 2008 12:20 AM, Stefan Sperling <stsp_at_elego.de> wrote:
> On Wed, Feb 06, 2008 at 05:13:28PM -0800, Jack Repenning wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 2008, at 1:21 PM, Branko ??ibej wrote:
> >
> >> Another thing that strikes me is that the whole errror number, e.g. 200011
> >> in the example above, is quite and completely useless; because you never
> >> *see* that number in the code! You see some constant + 11, so this display
> >> is quite useless for searching for the cause.
> >
> > I think we're looking for "pretty displays that provide the sort of info
> > naive users would push into google," more than "information-dense displays
> > that the primary committers can do amazing tricks with," aren't we? And
> > basically, the naive user is going to paste in the error line, whatever it
> > says (or some substring). So why do we need any representation at all of
> > the constant offset?
>
> And come to think of it, why do we need a numeric representation at all if
> pasting the whole error string into a search engine will yield meaningful
> results? Will another numeric identifier really make that much of a
> difference for a user looking for the solution to a problem?
>
> I may seem contradictory by saying the above while having posted the patch.
> I did the patch mostly as a proof-of-concept of Karl's idea, of which
> I was originally convinced as well. But now it turns out that the discussion
> the patch has kicked off is already worth more than the patch itself IMHO :)

I think that I sort of started us down this discussion with the
comment I made about how Googling those useless DAV errors sometimes
at least led to other people with same problems (and solutions).

I think the best course of action might be to try thing as they are
(no new codes or anything). If it starts to seem like a problem
(users seem to be having more problems diagnosing errors than in the
past) then we can always look to change the error messages in a future
version.

-- 
Thanks
Mark Phippard
http://markphip.blogspot.com/
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: dev-unsubscribe_at_subversion.tigris.org
For additional commands, e-mail: dev-help_at_subversion.tigris.org