I'm not sure if this is going to be a rant or a comment. It seems to me that the code that logs configuration errors is the least tested code. One reason for this is because during development developers tend to set up their systems correctly so configuration errors happen rarely occur.
Later when someone comes to set up the system again to maintain or use it, they inevitably make mistakes and trigger exceptions which causes messages to be logged, often for the first time. The usually code does it job and something is logged but in practice the error message only tells you what occurred but gives no clue on how to fix it. Often the reason for the exception is not preserved when exceptions are not chained.
Right now I have problem but I'm refactoring code, deliberately not fixing my environment until the logs are printing something useful. Through deep debugging I already know what the cause is but I shouldn't need to debug to know that a config path is wrong. The code is improving.
Posted by stuartcw at November 28, 2002 11:31 AM