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

[Martin Pool]

2009/8/11 James Westby <jw+debian at jameswestby.net>:
> 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.

That's a really good point.

How about if we said something like this

$ bzr branch....
AbsentContentFactory has no attribute...
This probably indicates a bug in Bazaar.  Sorry.  For help or to
report a bug see http://bazaar-......

Also and separately, "we have a problem in streaming" should at least
say so, not just raise an AttributeError, but that's orthogonal.

-- 
Martin <http://launchpad.net/~mbp/>