OpenLiberty / OpenLiberty/liberty-tools-eclipse

Review user-facing error messages to distinguish cases where it's helpful to "see Error Log for details".

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bug
Dominant language
Java
Stars
16
Forks
20
Avg merge
2d 9h
Merged PRs (30d)
16

Description

We have plenty of error messages surfaced to the user in error dialog boxes that provide complete-enough descriptions w/o needing to reference the error log.

E.g.

"The start in container request was already issued on project intro. Use the stop action prior to selecting the start action.
See Error Log for details."

But there's nothing helpful to be gained from referencing the error log. It's a waste of time.

It'd really only be helpful if something truly unexpected happened..in which case someone could grab and share the stack trace.

Maybe our: ErrorHandler.processErrorMessage() function should have another flag or new method to distinguish cases where the error log isn't likely to be helpful.

Contributor guide

Open the contributing guide

First steps

  1. Read the whole issue, then the project's contributing guide.
  2. Comment on the issue to say you are picking it up — it saves two people doing the same work.
  3. Fork the repository and make your change on a branch.
  4. Open a pull request that references the issue number.

Research direction

Start with ErrorHandler.processErrorMessage() and trace the error dialog callers that append “See Error Log for details.” Review the user-facing messages for cases where the existing description is sufficient, then verify that the log guidance is reserved for genuinely unexpected errors and that the affected dialogs show the intended wording.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
java
Domain
devtools
Issue type
Feature
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Stale
Clarity
Mostly clear
Newbie friendliness
35/100

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