RFC: remove traceback from "newer branch format than your bzr"

[Russel Winder]

I am with Emma on this.  And I seem to recollect we have had this debate
in the past.

For high quality programmers, there is no issue.  They implicitly
understand the difference between internal and external problems and can
likely differentiate them and deal with them.  Heck, they are probably
doing exactly the same in the stuff they are writing.

Weak programmers are just weak, and all too often incompetent.  Sadly.
We cannot ignore them though as they form the vast majority of
programmers.  Sadly.  Let us treat them as non-programmers.

More importantly, for me, are the real non-programmers who we are going
to get using Bazaar, even if Bazaar is focused on programmers as
audience.  Actually I think in the end they will be the majority users.

Non-programmers will be scared witless by the current penchant for
Bazaar to throw programmer informative stack traces.  This is especially
true where the situation is an error and not a bug.

I think that release versions of Bazaar should *never* display a stack
trace.  bzr.dev and the RCs are a different matter since they are being
used in situations where the information is actually useful, by people
who (generally) can deal with the situation.  No problem there.

Stack traces in release versions are, for me, a huge problem, because
they will frighten secretaries, managers, authors, and cause their
bosses to be shocked and this will stop the spread of Bazaar.

On Tue, 2009-08-11 at 08:47 +0300, Alexander Belchenko wrote:
> Emma Jane пишет:
> > This evening I tried to grab a copy of Ian's new documentation. I'm using the 
> > Bazaar that comes with Ubuntu (1.13) which happens to use the old formats. I 
> > was a greeted with a fairly scary message. It's at the bottom of this message.
> > 
> > While I appreciate the usefulness of tracebacks, I'm not sure it's entirely 
> > necessary or appropriate in this case. More specifically:
> > 
> > 1. The first line of the error pretty much says everything I need to know:
> > 	bzr: ERROR: exceptions.KeyError: 'Bazaar repository format 2a 
> > 	(needs bzr 1.16 or later)\n'
> > With the exception of the \n, I think this message does a pretty good job of 
> > telling me what the problem is. The rest of the message (all traceback?) could 
> > be omitted.
> > 
> > 2. At the end of the message, which is what my terminal window scrolls after 
> > dumping a lot of garbage, I'm told to report a bug. I don't think it's a "bug" 
> > that I'm using an old version. Perhaps a new type of error message is needed?
> 
> No, in your case (big scary traceback) it's actually bug. So if you'll file a bug about traceback on
> unknown format somebody will definitely improve this part, if not already done.
> 
> > 
> > 3. Generally I find tracebacks really scary. I don't do anything in Bazaar that 
> > *should* generate errors (I typically work with fewer than 30 files and fewer 
> > than 500 revisions per project; I rarely do merges and use BzrUpload for most 
> > projects). I would prefer if the tracebacks were turned off by default with a 
> > message on how to enable them, but there's no way that I can see to turn them 
> > off.
> > 
> > 
> > regards,
> > emma
> > 
> > PS I'm now using the PPA at Robert's recommendation and it's working well. 
> > Thanks!
[ . . . ]
-- 
Russel.
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Dr Russel Winder      Partner
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