Run-Time vs. Config-time error checking controls

[Mark Miller]

On Thu, 2010-10-21 at 10:26, Jason Kraftcheck wrote:

> > All the arguments for strict checking seem
> to center around helping developers avoid accidentally doing things that are
> not guaranteed to work with all implementations.  While people may think
> that this is a good practice, mandating that our implementation conform to
> this practice seems well beyond the scope of the API specification.

Why do we define iBase_ErrorType in iBase.h, then? Why don't we just let
all implementations decide what error codes to return or whether to
return any error code at all when the caller does something wrong or
something they shouldn't have or something that is 'not portable across
all implementations' (look for a follow-up email on this).

I think specifying how the API responds to 'wrong' or 'erroneous'
actions by the caller is part of the API specification. In some cases,
its essential for implementors and users alike to know this. In other
cases, maybe the current issue at hand, it is not as critical.

Mark

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Mark C. Miller, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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