Swallowed exceptions

[Or Cohen]

Hi,

I've stumbled upon an issue which I'm not sure how to even address it.

If I raise a RuntimeError (simple raise) or a StandardError (specifically) from a participant then the flow behaves fine, i.e. I see the exception with #noisy and I can catch it with :on_error.

But if I raise a NameError, on some cases it just waits forever.

I'm working on a big project so at first I thought it was something related to the project's code, but I've managed to create a simple example that causes this (using latest master).

require 'ruote'

require 'ruote/storage/fs_storage'

 

ruote = Ruote::Dashboard.new(

  Ruote::Worker.new(

    Ruote::FsStorage.new('ruote_work')))

class PartA < Ruote::Participant

  def on_workitem

    raise NameError, self.class

    reply # Not really needed

  end

end

class PartB < Ruote::Participant

  def on_workitem

    raise StandardError, self.class

    reply # Not really needed

  end

end

class HandleError < Ruote::Participant

  def on_workitem

    puts workitem.param_or_field('msg')

    reply

  end

end

ruote.register 'part_a', PartA

ruote.register 'part_b', PartB

ruote.register 'handle_error', HandleError

pdef = Ruote.define do

  concurrence do

    part_a :on_error => 'handle error'

    part_b :on_error => 'handle error'

  end

  define 'handle error' do

    participant 'handle_error', :msg => 'on_error!'

  end

end

ruote.noisy = true

wfid = ruote.launch(pdef)

ruote.wait_for(wfid)

PartA and PartB are the same, except for the different Error. A few notes:

1. If you change self.class to "some string", it works. In this part, I'm not sure if it's some Ruby behavior I'm not familiar with, or some context related behavior that is caused by Ruote (or a totally different thing). I suspect a context issue because if you set "#{self.class}" then it works, so maybe self.class is being sent in a different context where it doesn't exist. I didn't use self.class when I saw the issue first, I called some different method.

2. If you change NameError to StandardError or RuntimeError, it works.

3. You can remove the :on_error attribute and it behaves the same, it was for me to check if maybe having an on_error handler changes the flow so that it works around this problem.

Does ruote handle different exceptions in a special way? Do I miss some fundamental Ruby behavior? (feeling kinda silly here :P)

Thanks,

Or

[John Mettraux]

Hello,

I'm still digesting your email, but I have a quick question: which Ruby
version on which platform?

Thanks in advance,

--
John Mettraux - http://lambda.io/jmettraux

[Or Cohen]

Ruby 1.9.3-p448 (using rvm) on Ubuntu 13.10

[John Mettraux]

Hello,

before deciding if I should fix that in ruote, I looked at it from irb (ruby
1.9.3p392 on Debian GNU/Linux 7).

Doing "raise NameError, String" results in a NameError that makes irb exit.

```
NameError: /opt/rubies/ruby-1.9.3-p392/lib/ruby/1.9.1/irb.rb:168:in `to_s':
can't convert Class into String (TypeError)
```

Doing "raise NameError, "String"" results in a "normal" NameError.

```
NameError: String
```

Looking at the documentation of raise:

http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-2.0.0/Kernel.html#method-i-raise

Are you sure you want to use raise(class, class) where raise(class, string)
is expected?

(If that's a new thing in Ruby 1.9 or 2.0 please point me to the doc (that
made you use raise(class, class))).


Best regards,

--
John Mettraux - http://lambda.io/jmettrauX

[Or Cohen]

Hello,

Thank you for the quick response. You are right, the documentation states that this should be a string, and it does work when passing a string.

I'd still like to note that this is an inconsistent behavior in Ruby, and the fact that IRB crashes is even more weird (a REPL should never crash):

> StandardError.new("foo") # => <StandardError: foo>

> StandardError.new(String) # => <StandardError: String>

> NameError.new("foo") # => <NameError: foo>

> NameError.new(String) # => Exception: `to_s': can't convert Class into String (TypeError)

I've sent a patch (http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby-trunk/repository/revisions/43447) and it was accepted so I guess that solves it.

Since this is a language (probably even implementation specific) bug, there's no point in fixing anything in ruote. I'm still wondering where the exception went, though.

Thank you, again.

--

Or Cohen.

[John Mettraux]

On Mon, Oct 28, 2013 at 02:37:16AM -0700, Or Cohen wrote:
>
> Thank you for the quick response. You are right, the documentation states
> that this should be a string, and it does work when passing a string.
>
> I'd still like to note that this is an inconsistent behavior in Ruby, and
> the fact that IRB crashes is even more weird (a REPL should never crash):
>
> > StandardError.new("foo") # => <StandardError: foo>
> > StandardError.new(String) # => <StandardError: String>
> > NameError.new("foo") # => <NameError: foo>
> > NameError.new(String) # => Exception: `to_s': can't convert Class into
> String (TypeError)
>
> I've sent a patch (
> http://bugs.ruby-lang.org/projects/ruby-trunk/repository/revisions/43447)
> and it was accepted so I guess that solves it.

Hello Or,

thanks for making Ruby better.

> Since this is a language (probably even implementation specific) bug,
> there's no point in fixing anything in ruote. I'm still wondering where the
> exception went, though.

I've added ```Thread.abort_on_exception = true``` on top of your sample code
and saw this:

```
7 13:14.466 80 di * 20131028-2113-jogegita-namesoso 2384e 0_1 part_a wi:
[0_1!2384e...!, 1], part: [PartA, {}]
/home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/exp/ro_on_x.rb:43:in `to_s': can't convert
Class into String (TypeError)
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/exp/ro_on_x.rb:43:in `message'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/exp/ro_on_x.rb:43:in `deflate'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/error_handler.rb:167:in `deflate'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/error_handler.rb:152:in `rescue in handle'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/error_handler.rb:110:in `handle'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/error_handler.rb:65:in `msg_handle'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/dispatch_pool.rb:98:in `rescue in do_dispatch'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/dispatch_pool.rb:95:in `do_dispatch'
from /home/jmettraux/w/ruote/lib/ruote/svc/dispatch_pool.rb:115:in `block in do_threaded_dispatch'
```

The "can't convert Class into String" happens in the rescue handler, and
since it happens in the dispatch thread it is silently happening (and the
flow stalls).

I need to make sure the exception gets reported: https://github.com/jmettraux/ruote/issues/90


Thanks a lot!

--
John Mettraux - http://lambda.io/jmettraux

[John Mettraux]

Made sure the error got to the fallback error handler.

Thanks again,

John

[Or Cohen]

Awesome! Thank you very much for quickly handling this and providing a solution :)