-----Original Message----- From: Johan Corveleyn [mailto:jcor...@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, December 07, 2010 12:36 PM To: Nick Stokes Cc: Andy Levy; users@subversion.apache.org Subject: Re: meaningful error messages in http
On Tue, Dec 7, 2010 at 9:18 PM, Nick Stokes <randomaccessitera...@gmail.com> wrote: > > ... SNIP ... > > No. I did not propose that. The question was simple: Is there way to > customize error messages from httpd server (akin to customizing logs in > apache as in http://tinyurl.com/svn-apache-logs)? When users see "Server > sent unexpected return value..." they assume there is something wrong with > the server itself, despite the keyword "Forbidden" that follows. Besides, > there is the redundant/misleading/irrelevant-for-client stuff there > (OPTIONS, MKACTIVITY, repos ID). e.g. svnserve error messages are much > better. Yes, I completely agree. It's not about the server sending better messages, but about the client (or client library or whatever) to transform that error message into something meaningful for the user. The svn client knows what operation the user is trying to execute, so it should be able to formulate something sensible in the context of that operation. Moreover, one would expect these kinds of error message to be exactly the same regardless of the underlying protocol or server type (unless it's some kind of protocol-specific error, like e.g. SSL handshake failure or something (which should also be made into user-sensible error messages, but might not be generic over all protocols)). I don't know if there is already an issue for this in the issue tracker, but regardless ... maybe we could have a useful discussion on this mailing list about what the error messages should say specifically? What would be most helpful for the user, in a concise and to-the-point way, concrete enough yet not too extremely technical, maybe giving some hints about what could be the cause, ... in all kinds of use cases? Cheers, -- Johan ----------------- My Response ------------------ I partially agree with Johan and Nick. Being able to customize the messages would be good. 403 seems like a generic "did not work" code. However, I think in this case, one would need to add more Apache/SVN error codes. Having a (I am making this up) 403.1 - repository not found, 403.2 - authentication failed, et cetera, may be helpful. Where I disagree is in a secure environment. You probably do not want to acknowledge server names, or repository names if someone is snooping around. Maybe that might be a difference between http: and https:. Just a thought. Happy Holidays, John
