Over-reaction (was Re: trapped in bash)

Over-reaction (was Re: trapped in bash)

[Bart Schaefer]

On Dec 19,  5:47pm, Daniel Shahaf wrote:
}
} Yes, error messages should generally be signed.

I don't like this, for several reasons:

1.  It's confusing extra information that is completely irrelevant to
    most users most of the time.  The circumstances in which this
    error comes up are ridiculously rare.

2.  Arguably it's not even useful extra information; anybody who would
    not be confused by the term "execve" already knows that's where
    the error must be coming from.

3.  No other shell exposes this detail.  That's not in itself a
    reason for zsh not to, but see #1 for context.

4.  There are other ways (previously posted command_not_found_handler
    for example) to convey the equivalent information.
 
5.  IMO Ray is deep into "if you break it, you get to keep the pieces"
    territory with his whole attempt to wholesale copy binaries from
    one architecture to another, and we should not take this as an
    example of situation we ought to be special-casing.

6.  It's a bad precedent to distract ourselves with stuff like #5 that
    doesn't even rise to the level of a FREQUENTLY asked question.

Re: Over-reaction (was Re: trapped in bash)

[Peter Stephenson]

On Mon, 19 Dec 2016 11:14:35 -0800
Bart Schaefer <schaefer@brasslantern.com> wrote:
> 2.  Arguably it's not even useful extra information; anybody who would
>     not be confused by the term "execve" already knows that's where
>     the error must be coming from.

If it's going to be useful, it should probably say what's going on
rather than the system call, e.g. "failed to execute".

There might be somewhere in the manual to give some hints, but adding
more to the manual tends to be just an excuse for people not to read it.

pws