Re: meaningful error messages in http

On Wed, Dec 8, 2010 at 5:13 AM, Johan Corveleyn <jcorvel_at_gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

> Most users don't know (or don't care) about HTTP error codes. And I
> bet 99.9% of svn users don't know what an OPTIONS request is (and
> they certainly don't care).
>
> Cheers,
>

Couldn't have said it better... On your earlier comment:

Moreover, one would expect these kinds of error message to be exactly
> the same regardless of the underlying protocol or server type (unless
> it's some kind of protocol-specific error, like e.g. SSL handshake
> failure or something (which should also be made into user-sensible
> error messages, but might not be generic over all protocols)).
>

Completely agree. Just wondering, is there a technical reason why subversion
wasn't already that way?

>
> I don't know if there is already an issue for this in the issue
> tracker, but regardless ... maybe we could have a useful discussion on
> this mailing list about what the error messages should say
> specifically?
>

What you proposed are fine, and I guess the more consistent with svnserve
the better. What would be curious to find if there is any one out there for
who these messages are essential. (your guess number 0.1% may be optimistic
:)

Nick
Received on 2010-12-08 16:22:33 CET