errutil

errutil

Why?

While numerous error packages provide rich functionality, errutil is the minimal (opinionated) functionality GRAX needs for error traces. Minimal functionality leads to:

• Consistent use through a codebase.
• A faster implementation.
• No assumptions to break. For example, when errors with meaning (UserNotFound) are offered.

Usage

With and friends produce an error containing location information. The locations in a chain of errors will surface in the Stack produced by BuildStack. The stack can then be logged, displayed, sent to a service etc.

The Wrap methods additionally wrap passed errors so errors.Is matches the original error. To understand when Wrap should be used instead of With, read the Whether to Wrap section of the Go 1.13 errors blog post.

Function calls should look similar to:

if err := aFunction(); err != nil {
    return errutil.With(err)
}

if err := bFunction(); err != nil {
    // err could be ErrUserNotFound or another sentinel error,
    // use Wrap so errors.Is(err, ErrUserNotFound) works.
    return errutil.Wrap(err)
}

Custom errors should implement Baser or errors.Unwrap to maintain traces, similar to:

type CustomError struct {
    Err error
    Field string
}

func (e CustomError) Error() string {
    return "field: " + e.Field
}

func (e CustomError) Base() error {
    return e.Err
}

Simple logging could be done with:

if err := topOfCalls(); err != nil {
    log.Println(errutil.BuildStack(err))
}

Future improvements

• Garbage reduction. Currently we maintain pointer equality in the same vein as errors.New as developers likely expect, however it requires heap allocation. This only shows up however in very fast loops.