[Grok-dev] Re: Zope 3 error message rage... :)

Sun Jul 8 15:47:07 EDT 2007

Two things that I have found difficult. I often get look up errors  
but it is difficult to understand what went wrong.

I also hade a "TypeError: unsubscriptable object" when I inserted an  
extra attirbute in my <html> tag in a page template...

I try to read the stack trace, but stack traces are tricky. I mean I  
can se what the offending line is, but it is a lot more difficult  
understanding why it failed, because it requires me to understand the  
framework a lot better.

Maybe the stack trace could tell me more about what the framework was  
attempting to do when it failed (using doc strings...). Maybe if I  
could just search on that stack trace pattern to find someone else  
who has had the same problem. I don't know, but what I do know is  
that when I get the problem and it isn't trivial, I want to search  
somewhere first to see if someone has had a similar problem.

I also know that I feel an urge to make a fresh cup of coffee when I  
get a look up error, just to be prepared for some serious hours of  
debugging... :p

Mvh Sebastian

7 jul 2007 kl. 21.49 skrev Martijn Faassen:

> Sebastian Ware wrote:
>> ME GROK make nice error message!
>> About two weeks into Grok... I just want to state the obvious.  
>> Zope 3 error messages suck! If anything can be done about this.  
>> There is a lot of time and effort to be saved. :)
>> It's beginning to feel a bit like the famous MS "An Unknown Error  
>> Occurred While...".
>
> Heh, I feel your pain. After a while you get used to them, but we  
> need to think about how to make this better.
>
> We have a number of classes of error:
>
> GrokImportError - you do something wrong with grok stuff and it  
> fails when the module gets imported. Not very common.
>
> GrokError - you do something wrong with Grok stuff and grok fails  
> during grok time (i.e. triggered from ZCML). Common enough
>
> Zope 3 errors - all kinds of stuff. ComponentLookupErrors, etc.  
> SystemError. Luckily security errors are pretty uncommon with Grok.
>
> Which error messages are bothering you the most? Any errors in  
> particular? I presume you know to look at the tracebacks in your  
> zope process, right? Perhaps we can surgically improve some errors  
> somehow. Philipp has been working on paste integration that might  
> help with traceback display eventually.
>
> One thing that is annoying is that a GrokError is somewhat obscured  
> by the ZCML error that is the result. This means you need to look a  
> few lines up to see the grok error. Is this a problem to you?
>
> I'd like to improve the error story, but we need ideas on how we  
> can improve things here. Anyone?
>
> Regards,
>
> Martijn
>
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