While preparing PRs like #9753, I've had to change error messages in
dozens of code paths. It would be nice if instead of
EvalError("expected 'boolean' but found '%1%'", showType(v))
we could write
TypeError(v, "boolean")
or similar. Then, changing the error message could be a mechanical
refactor with the compiler pointing out places the constructor needs to
be changed, rather than the error-prone process of grepping through the
codebase. Structured errors would also help prevent the "same" error
from having multiple slightly different messages, and could be a first
step towards error codes / an error index.
This PR reworks the exception infrastructure in `libexpr` to
support exception types with different constructor signatures than
`BaseError`. Actually refactoring the exceptions to use structured data
will come in a future PR (this one is big enough already, as it has to
touch every exception in `libexpr`).
The core design is in `eval-error.hh`. Generally, errors like this:
state.error("'%s' is not a string", getAttrPathStr())
.debugThrow<TypeError>()
are transformed like this:
state.error<TypeError>("'%s' is not a string", getAttrPathStr())
.debugThrow()
The type annotation has moved from `ErrorBuilder::debugThrow` to
`EvalState::error`.
This keeps hint messages, source location information, and source code
snippets grouped together, while making stack traces shorter (so that
more stack frames can be viewed on the same terminal).
Before:
error:
… while evaluating the attribute 'body'
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:4:3:
3|
4| body = x "x";
| ^
5| }
… from call site
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:4:10:
3|
4| body = x "x";
| ^
5| }
… while calling 'x'
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:2:7:
1| let {
2| x = arg: assert arg == "y"; 123;
| ^
3|
error: assertion '(arg == "y")' failed
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:2:12:
1| let {
2| x = arg: assert arg == "y"; 123;
| ^
3|
After:
error:
… while evaluating the attribute 'body'
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:4:3:
3|
4| body = x "x";
| ^
5| }
… from call site
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:4:10:
3|
4| body = x "x";
| ^
5| }
… while calling 'x'
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:2:7:
1| let {
2| x = arg: assert arg == "y"; 123;
| ^
3|
error: assertion '(arg == "y")' failed
at /Users/wiggles/nix/tests/functional/lang/eval-fail-assert.nix:2:12:
1| let {
2| x = arg: assert arg == "y"; 123;
| ^
3|
I think it is bad for these reasons when `tests/` contains a mix of
functional and integration tests
- Concepts is harder to understand, the documentation makes a good
unit vs functional vs integration distinction, but when the
integration tests are just two subdirs within `tests/` this is not
clear.
- Source filtering in the `flake.nix` is more complex. We need to
filter out some of the dirs from `tests/`, rather than simply pick
the dirs we want and take all of them. This is a good sign the
structure of what we are trying to do is not matching the structure
of the files.
With this change we have a clean:
```shell-session
$ git show 'HEAD:tests'
tree HEAD:tests
functional/
installer/
nixos/
```
