Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [HEY TOM!] unhelpful error for unreadable directories

[Matthieu Moy]

Aaron Bentley <address@hidden> writes:

> No, since this error will typically happen during or before their tla
> import, these will tend to be new users.  And they'll conclude that
> tla is borked and chuck it.

I was a beginner with arch a few weeks ago, and I confirm:

tla's error messages are really confusing.

They  often refer  to tla's  internal implementation,  which  the user
doesn't want to know  about. The distinction between assertion failure
(error message for developers) and  user error message is not clear. I
often get assertion  failures with tla for something  that should be a
real error message.

Example (not the worst, but the first I found):

$ rm xxxyyyzzz
rm: cannot remove `xxxyyyzzz': No such file or directory
$ tla file-diffs xxxyyyzzz
error finding file id (2: No such file or directory)
 path: ./xxxyyyzzz
PANIC: arch_inventory_id

Which is the best?

What's the use of "PANIC: arch_inventory_id" for the final user?

I didn't drop  tla, but this is  in my opinion one of  the reasons why
tla  has the  reputation  of being  complex  to use.  I  can give  you
examples of people that stopped using arch because it was too complex.

This is acceptable since tla is still young, but this should change in
the future.

--
Matthieu