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

[James Westby]

Martin Pool wrote:
> 2- I agree with Russel we should only log the exception by default,
> though having a means to turn it on (like -Derror) only for unexpected
> errors would be good.  This would implicitly fix some bug reports
> about eg socketerror causing a traceback - it will still be not ideal
> that we just say "no route to host" but it looks better.
>
> Does anyone disagree?


Sort of.

I still think that it should at least include the stanza about filing a
bug on unexpected errors. Otherwise you get something like

  $ bzr branch ...
  AbsentContentFactory has no attribute ...

which is absolutely unhelpful, but presented as a message the user
should know how to deal with. The traceback and the instructions to
file a bug at least provide an indication that it is a bzr bug, rather
than user error.

Error messages are hugely important for usability, and providing these
hints to the user is a great help with that, as we can't ensure that
there are no unexpected errors.

It works against your point that it would make some bugs go away, but
it's not really the right way to fix them anyway.

Thanks,

James