deepspeedai / deepspeedai/DeepSpeed

Exception type too broad in error handling

Open
#8,093 1 comment 0 reactions 0 assignees View on GitHub

Nobody has claimed this yet.

Dominant language
Python
Stars
43.1k
Forks
5k
Avg merge
4d 15h
Merged PRs (30d)
112

Description

Bug Report

Description

Some except clauses catch overly broad exception types (e.g., bare except: or except Exception:), which can accidentally swallow important errors like KeyboardInterrupt or SystemExit.

Example
# Problematic:
try:
    do_something()
except:  # catches EVERYTHING including KeyboardInterrupt
    pass

# Better:
try:
    do_something()
except ValueError as e:
    logger.warning(f"Value error: {e}")
Expected Behavior

Exception handlers should catch only the specific exceptions they know how to handle.

Impact
  • Makes it impossible to interrupt the program with Ctrl+C in some cases
  • Hides unexpected errors that should be investigated
  • Makes debugging significantly harder
Suggested Fix

Replace broad except clauses with specific exception types wherever possible.

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

No files or tests are identified in the issue. Search the Python codebase for bare except clauses and except Exception, inspect each handler's intended failure modes, and verify that handlers catch only exceptions they can handle without swallowing KeyboardInterrupt or SystemExit.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Assessment

Tech stack
python
Domain
machine-learning
Issue type
Bug
Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Activity status
Quiet
Clarity
Needs clarification
Newbie friendliness
42/100

Get new issues in your inbox

A short digest of beginner-friendly GitHub issues.