Re: [boost] Outcome v2

Subject: Re: [boost] Outcome v2
From: Gavin Lambert (gavinl_at_[hidden])
Date: 2017-07-17 02:00:24

On 14/07/2017 06:09, Emil Dotchevski wrote:
> If std::error_code is sufficient, put your money where your mouth is and go
> back to outcome v1 where the only choices were std::error_code and
> std::exception_ptr. But the reality is that std::error_code is not
> sufficient (perhaps not due to its own deficiencies); in practice you do
> need to be able to transport more or less arbitrary error types.

I think the issue is that while std::error_code is sufficient to convey 
an error *code*, it is not sufficient to convey an error *context*.

Outcome v1 solved this by standardising on a slightly-larger type that 
conveyed a specific small set of additional data, which was deemed good 
enough for most uses -- but there's still a bit of sacrifice involved 
there since it would be too much for some cases and too little for 
others, combined with the separated storage causing it to sometimes go 
away unexpectedly.

I mentioned in a discussion thread at the time that it might be useful 
to consider having multiple user-defined derived subtypes of 
std::error_code (or one standard templated one) to add additional 
context state, similar to how std::exception is subclassed to add 
additional state to that.  Though this has some downsides as well, 
mainly requirement to not pass by value (unless you want to slice off 
the extra data) and possible introduction of memory allocations (eg. if 
std::string were in the payload), which also discourages pass-by-value.

Outcome v2 appears to have chosen a different path, where you mostly 
still use unadorned std::error_code (although since it's templated it's 
possible you could still do the above) but you also get an extra 
arbitrary payload pointer *or* an exception_ptr (where then presumably 
your extra payload is carried in a particular exception subclass).  I'm 
still a bit on the fence about that latter option; exception_ptrs are a 
bit of a pain to extract useful information from.  Or perhaps I'm just 
misinterpreting something; the docs are still incomplete after all.