Exceptions with Context Re: Proposal: Add exception info

hrm, i like this proposal more, and it seems like with some fleshing out it can be strictly more extensible yet backwards compatible than michael's I'll need to mull it a bit more before I cast my vote, but this seems to sketch out a design that provides the same information, but in a more extensible/backwards compatible fashion (at least in a first cut of thinking about it) (i'm splitting this into a new thread so the discussions dont get mixed up) On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 9:40 PM, davean wrote:

So, I've had a number of issues with exceptions. This has been one of them. I don't really like this proposal as it stands though as it seems to make catch a specific exception with said extra info more difficult.

This is data Control.Exception can move around on its own though, right? The problem really isn't passing it internal, we could just make a (Stack, SomeException) tuple just fine, in theory I think (I'll admit I've not actually reviewed the code, and this isn't meant as a complete proposal but more a thought experiment). The problem is code handling the data and working with old code while not losing any of the power of the current system.

So we start with: catch :: Exception e => IO a -> (e -> IO a) -> IO a

Now this proposal allows: catch :: IO a -> (SomeException -> IO a) -> IO a If we want access to the new information, but that's not really satisfactory.

Real code regularly wants to (picking an arbitrary instance of Exception) do: catch :: IO a -> (IOError -> IO a) -> IO a only we still want new data.

Now one could do something like: catch :: IO a -> (Stack -> IOError -> IO a) -> IO a but that is not very upgradable and it breaks existing code.

But this is just a matter of requesting information, so one could do something like: catch :: IO a -> (WithStack IOError -> IO a) -> IO a where: data WithStack e = WithStack Stack e Or maybe one just addes: catchWithContext :: Exception e => IO a -> (Context -> e -> IO a) -> IO a Or: catchWithContext :: Exception => IO a -> (Context e -> IO a) -> IO a

Now existing code continues to run and we can feed our exception handlers the data they want, even when we want some specific exception instead of just any exception.

Now that still leave a hole in what I want out of exceptions. We're still short of programmatic interrogating them, or even telling what the exception was if we didn't expect it!

Consider AssertionFailed https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.8.0.0/docs/src/GHC-IO-Exception.h.... Its show instance is "showsPrec _ (AssertionFailed err) = showString err", so if we print out the SomeException, we get whatever string is in AssertionFailed. Which is great if that string makes sense. But you see that on your console and its a bit baffling if it doesn't. It could even be a lie, I can make that say something that looks like its a different exception. We can use the Typeable instance so the program can tell them apart at least though. Which works as long as the exception is single-constructor, or has a well-behaved show instance. What if we come across a monstrosity like http://hackage.haskell.org/package/http-conduit-2.1.5/docs/Network-HTTP-Cond... and it doesn't have a nice show instance that says which on it is? If Exception added a Data constraint we could actually pull apart these exceptions and start to make proper sense of them reliably.

Once you have that there are quite a few useful things you can do with the exceptions you didn't expect. Currently you could only do them by enumerating every possible exception which of course doesn't work for the unexpected.

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 6:24 PM, Michael Sloan wrote:

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No, this proposal is not specifically about stack traces, that is just one of the usecases. Instead, this is about a general mechanism for including extra information with exceptions. The core of this proposal is still relevant even if the behavior of error / throw / throwTo / etc remain unchanged.

I'm not familiar with how the new dwarf stuff will interact with throwing / displaying exceptions. It seems like this would require having the debugger break at the throw site, and exceptions would still lack stack traces. Having informative stack traces is quite orthogonal to having a good place to store them.

Note that in my original proposal text I mentioned that this is agnostic of the particular source of the stack trace. In particular, this could be used with a profiling stack trace, implicit callstack, or, indeed, these traces via dwarf.

-Michael

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 3:06 PM, Carter Schonwald < carter.schonwald@gmail.com> wrote:

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On a more important note: assuming ghc 7.12 has support for informative stack traces via dwarf by default, wouldn't that eliminate the need for this proposal? Namely : there perhaps should be some reasonable way to talk about concatting stack traces perhaps?

Phrased differently: how is the info that should perhaps be in informative stack traces not subsuming the info of this proposal?

On Tuesday, April 21, 2015, Michael Sloan wrote:

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Ah, but it looks like Niklas does have a patch which adds implicit locations to such functions: https://phabricator.haskell.org/D861

However, there are some issues with changing the API of these functions: https://phabricator.haskell.org/D861#23250

(as mentioned in the "Backporting srcLoc to the GHC 7.10 branch" thread)

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 2:04 PM, Michael Sloan wrote:

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Hmm, that patch doesn't appear to add stack traces to 'Prelude.error', which is what Carter wants here. Also, I think it would be done with profiling callstacks rather than implicit callstacks. But it's certainly also useful to have functions which do the same with implicit callstacks!

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 1:55 PM, Evan Laforge wrote:

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Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't this already implemented?

https://phabricator.haskell.org/D578

On Tue, Apr 21, 2015 at 1:37 PM, Michael Sloan wrote: > On Thu, Apr 16, 2015 at 8:08 PM, Carter Schonwald > wrote: >> >> if you can patch prelude error to include stack traces, i will owe you a >> >=1 beer each at the next two icfps. Thats all i want for christmas. :) > > > Sounds good! No promises, but I'll be giving this a try soon. Looking > forward to ICFP beers either way :D > >> i can't speak for how a different patch might work out, because thats not >> what I'd tried at the time. If you have a go, please share the results! >> -Carter >> >> On Wed, Apr 15, 2015 at 12:22 AM, Michael Sloan wrote: >>> >>> Hi Carter! >>> >>> Interesting! This thread, right? >>> https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/libraries/2014-December/024429.html >>> >>> I haven't tried this as a patch to base, but I'm certain that the core of >>> the proposal has no extra dependencies. Note that the proposal isn't about >>> stack traces in particular - that's just one application of being able to >>> throw exceptions with extra information. >>> >>> Even if `throwTo` isn't modified to throw exceptions with stack traces, >>> this functionality could be provided outside of `Control.Exception` (though, >>> that does seem like the right place to put it). I'm surprised that the >>> circularity was so problematic, though. Why isn't it sufficient to have an >>> hs-boot file for `GHC.Stack`, which exports `currentCallStack`? >>> >>> -Michael >>> >>> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 7:55 PM, Carter Schonwald >>> wrote: >>>> >>>> Hey Michael, >>>> I actually proposed something along these lines that got OK'd by >>>> libraries early this past fall, the main challenge we hit was actually doing >>>> the enginering to add the stack traces to exceptions! theres some nasty >>>> module cycles in base that happen when you try to weave things around so >>>> that the standard error "message here" call includes some stack trace info. >>>> Have you tried to do that simple starter patch to base? >>>> >>>> Chris Allen and I spent like 2 days trying to get it to work and just >>>> gave up because of the cycles. We (and others) would probably love some >>>> headway on that front. >>>> >>>> Theres also some in progress work to use the dwarf debugging info data >>>> in >7.10 to provide useful stack traces in the default builds for GHC afaik, >>>> 'cause the stack trace functionality you're pointing at currenlty only work >>>> on profiled builds >>>> >>>> cheers >>>> -Carter >>>> >>>> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 2:38 PM, Michael Sloan < mgsloan@gmail.com> >>>> wrote: >>>>> >>>>> Control.Exception currently lacks a good way to supply extra >>>>> information along with exceptions. For example, exceptions could be >>>>> thrown along with their callstack[1] or implicit stack[2], but we have >>>>> no generic way to include this information with exceptions. >>>>> >>>>> Proposed Solution >>>>> ================= >>>>> >>>>> The proposed solution is to add a list of `SomeExceptionInfo` to the >>>>> `SomeException` datatype. This list stores additional information >>>>> about the exception. These `ExceptionInfo` instances use a mechanism >>>>> which is pretty much identical to the dynamic way the `Exception` type >>>>> works: >>>>> >>>>> data SomeException = forall e . Exception e => >>>>> SomeExceptionWithInfo e [SomeExceptionInfo] >>>>> >>>>> data SomeExceptionInfo = forall a . ExceptionInfo a => >>>>> SomeExceptionInfo a >>>>> >>>>> class Typeable a => ExceptionInfo a where >>>>> displayExceptionInfo :: a -> String >>>>> >>>>> addExceptionInfo >>>>> :: (ExceptionInfo a, Exception e) >>>>> => a -> e -> SomeException >>>>> addExceptionInfo x (toException -> SomeExceptionWithInfo e xs) = >>>>> SomeExceptionWithInfo e (SomeExceptionInfo x : xs) >>>>> >>>>> `ExceptionInfo` lacks the to / from functions that `Exception` has, >>>>> because I don't see much point in supporting a hierarchy for exception >>>>> info. The `Typeable` superclass constraint supplies the necessary >>>>> casting. >>>>> >>>>> `SomeExceptionInfo` could validly instead just use the constraint >>>>> `(Typeable a, Show a)`. However, I believe it's good to have a new >>>>> class for this so that: >>>>> >>>>> * The user can specify a custom `displayExceptionInfo` >>>>> implementation, for when this extra info is presented to the user. >>>>> This function would be invoked by the `show` implementation for >>>>> `SomeException`. >>>>> >>>>> * Types need to opt-in to be usable with `SomeExceptionInfo`. >>>>> Similarly to exceptions, I imagine that a type with a >>>>> `ExceptionInfo` instance won't be used for anything but acting as >>>>> such an annotation. Having a class for this allows you to ask GHCI >>>>> about all in-scope exception info types via `:info ExceptionInfo`. >>>>> >>>>> Backwards Compatibility >>>>> ======================= >>>>> >>>>> GHC 7.10 adds support for bidirectional pattern synonyms. This means >>>>> that this change could be made without breaking code: >>>>> >>>>> pattern SomeException x <- SomeExceptionWithInfo x _ where >>>>> SomeException x = SomeExceptionWithInfo x [] >>>>> >>>>> Note that consumers of this do not need to enable `-XPatternSynonyms`. >>>>> >>>>> Applications >>>>> ============ >>>>> >>>>> Callstacks >>>>> ---------- >>>>> >>>>> As mentioned at the beginning, this can be used to add callstacks to >>>>> exceptions: >>>>> >>>>> newtype ExceptionCallStack = >>>>> ExceptionCallStack { unExceptionCallStack :: [String] } >>>>> deriving Typeable >>>>> >>>>> instance ExceptionInfo ExceptionCallStack where >>>>> displayExceptionInfo = unlines . unExceptionCallStack >>>>> >>>>> throwIOWithStack :: Exception e => e -> IO a >>>>> throwIOWithStack e = do >>>>> stack <- currentCallStack >>>>> if null stack >>>>> then throwIO e >>>>> else throwIO (addExceptionInfo (ExceptionCallStack stack) >>>>> e) >>>>> >>>>> I see little downside for making something like this the default >>>>> implementation `throwIO`. Each rethrowing of the `SomeException` >>>>> would add an additional stacktrace to its annotation, much like the >>>>> output of `+RTS -xc`. Unlike this debug output, though, the >>>>> stacktraces would be associated with the exception, rather than just >>>>> listing locations that exceptions were thrown. This makes it >>>>> tractable to debug exceptions that occur in concurrent programs, or in >>>>> programs which frequently throw exceptions during normal functioning. >>>>> >>>>> Throwing Exceptions in Handlers >>>>> ------------------------------- >>>>> >>>>> Example: >>>>> >>>>> main = >>>>> throwIO InformativeErrorMessage `finally` >>>>> throwIO ObscureCleanupIssue >>>>> >>>>> While `InformativeErrorMessage` got thrown, the user doesn't see it, >>>>> since `ObscureCleanupIssue` is thrown instead. This causes a few >>>>> issues: >>>>> >>>>> 1. If the exception is handled by the default handler and yielded to >>>>> the user, then the more informative error is lost. >>>>> >>>>> 2. Callers who expect to catch the "Informative error message" won't >>>>> run their handlers for this exception type. >>>>> >>>>> Problem 1 can now easily be resolved by adding some info to the >>>>> exception: >>>>> >>>>> data ExceptionCause = ExceptionCause >>>>> { unExceptionCause :: SomeException } >>>>> deriving Typeable >>>>> >>>>> instance ExceptionInfo ExceptionCause where >>>>> displayExceptionInfo fe = >>>>> "thrown while handling " ++ >>>>> displayException (unExceptionCause fe) >>>>> >>>>> catch :: Exception e => IO a -> (e -> IO a) -> IO a >>>>> catch f g = f `oldCatch` handler >>>>> where >>>>> handler ex = g ex `oldCatch` \(ex' :: SomeException) -> >>>>> throwIO (addExceptionInfo info ex') >>>>> where >>>>> info = ExceptionCause (toException ex) >>>>> >>>>> This implementation of `catch` is written in a backwards-compatible >>>>> way, such that the exception thrown during finalization is still the >>>>> one that gets rethrown. The "original" exception is recorded in the >>>>> added info. This is the same approach used by Python 3's >>>>> `__context__` attribute[3]. This was brought to my attention in a >>>>> post by Mike Meyer[4], in a thread about having bracket not suppress >>>>> the original exception[5]. >>>>> >>>>> This doesn't directly resolve issue #2, due to this backwards >>>>> compatibility. With the earlier example, a `catch` handler for >>>>> `InformativeErrorMessage` won't be invoked, because it isn't the >>>>> exception being rethrown. This can be resolved by having a variant of >>>>> catch which instead throws the original exception. This might be a >>>>> good default for finalization handlers like `bracket` and `finally`. >>>>> >>>>> Asynchronous Exceptions >>>>> ----------------------- >>>>> >>>>> Currently, the only reliable way to catch exceptions, ignoring async >>>>> exceptions, is to fork a new thread. This is the approach used by the >>>>> enclosed-exceptions[6] package. I think it's quite ugly that we need >>>>> to go to such lengths due to the lack of one bit of information about >>>>> the exception! This would resolve ghc trac #5902[7]. >>>>> >>>>> base-4.7 added the `SomeAsyncException` type, but this doesn't enforce >>>>> anything. Any exception can be thrown as a sync or async exception. >>>>> Instead, we ought to have a reliable way to know if an exception is >>>>> synchronous or asynchronous. Here's what this would look like: >>>>> >>>>> data IsAsync = IsAsync >>>>> deriving (Typeable, Show) >>>>> >>>>> instance ExceptionInfo IsAsync where >>>>> displayExceptionInfo IsAsync = "thrown asynchronously" >>>>> >>>>> throwTo :: Exception e => ThreadId -> e -> IO () >>>>> throwTo tid = oldThrowTo tid . addExceptionInfo IsAsync >>>>> >>>>> The details of this get a bit tricky: What happens if `throwIO` is >>>>> used to rethrow a `SomeException` which has this `IsAsync` flag set? >>>>> I'm going to leave out my thoughts on this for now as the interactions >>>>> between unsafePerformIO and the concept of "rethrowing" async >>>>> exceptions. Such details are explained in a post by Edsko de Vries[8] >>>>> and ghc trac #2558[9]. >>>>> >>>>> Issue: fromException loses info >>>>> =============================== >>>>> >>>>> I can think of one main non-ideal aspect of this proposal: >>>>> >>>>> Currently, the `toException` and `fromException` methods usually form >>>>> a prism. In other words, when `fromException` yields a `Just`, you >>>>> should get the same `SomeException` when using `toException` on that >>>>> value. >>>>> >>>>> For example, >>>>> >>>>> fail "testing 1 2 3" `catch` \(ex :: SomeException) -> throwIO ex >>>>> >>>>> is equivalent to >>>>> >>>>> fail "testing 3 4 5" `catch` \(ex :: IOError) -> throwIO ex >>>>> >>>>> However, with exception info added to just `SomeException`, and no >>>>> changes to existing `Exception` instances, this >>>>> doesn't hold. Exceptions caught as a specific exception type get >>>>> rethrown with less information. >>>>> >>>>> One resolution to this is be to add `[SomeExceptionInfo]` as a field >>>>> to existing `Exception` instances. This would require the use of >>>>> non-default implementations of the `toException` and `fromException` >>>>> instances. >>>>> >>>>> Another approach is to have variants of `catch` and `throw` which also >>>>> pass around the `[SomeExceptionInfo]`. >>>>> >>>>> [1] >>>>> https://hackage.haskell.org/package/base-4.8.0.0/docs/GHC-Stack.html#current... >>>>> [2] >>>>> https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ExplicitCallStack/ImplicitLocations >>>>> [3] https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-3134/ >>>>> [4] >>>>> https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2014-July/114987.html >>>>> [5] >>>>> https://mail.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2014-July/114986.html >>>>> [6] https://hackage.haskell.org/package/enclosed-exceptions >>>>> [7] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/5902 >>>>> [8] http://www.edsko.net/2013/06/11/throwTo/ >>>>> [9] https://ghc.haskell.org/trac/ghc/ticket/2558 >>>>> >>>>> _______________________________________________ >>>>> Libraries mailing list >>>>> Libraries@haskell.org >>>>> http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/libraries >>>>> >>>> >>> >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Libraries mailing list > Libraries@haskell.org > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/libraries >

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