Re: [PUSHED] x11 / cairo-less build try #3

On Mon, 2012-02-20 at 09:21 +0100, Stephan Bergmann wrote:
> >     Nice - IMHO this is all a bit silly - the 'main' has no wrapper 'catch'
> > around it, so if we get an un-caught exception we bomb out in a very
> > unpleasant way for no particularly good reason.
...
> >     Stephan - is there a reason why we would not catch and print something
> > helpful (a native dialog?) on unhandled exceptions around master ?
...
> In my experience, such exceptions typically indicate a programming error 
> (either in actual program code, or in the way the bits of the program 
> are combined into an installation set).  And for programmers, it is 
> often more helpful to see the direct consequences of such error than 
> some "helpful" mediation on LO's part (like the infamous "The user 
> language cannot be determined" message, typically caused by some problem 
> that has zero to do with any locale data, only leading devs to start 
> searching in the wrong direction).

        Haha :-) indeed, however a pathalogical, silent abort, without even an
auto-save, or any message from the exception is rather unfortunate
too ;-)

        So - what would the dis-advantages be of having an un-conditional catch
wrapper around main that builds a useful string from the exception's
contents (which while English, is usually more useful than an
unexplained failure) ?

        Of course, we wouldn't necessarily need a native dialog for that - but
from a bug reporting perspective - a bug with -some- pointers is more
useful than a bland "it fails to launch" thing, presumably.

        ATB,

                Michael.
-- 
michael.meeks@suse.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot