Re: Lilypond error behaviour

[David Kastrup]

Urs Liska <address@hidden> writes:

> Am 17. April 2016 08:20:52 MESZ, schrieb David Kastrup <address@hidden>:
>
>>A warning is appropriate for something which is not an error: namely
>>LilyPond has a well-specified task but the results will not likely
>>make sense.  LilyPond does not return an error code for a warning.
>
> Well, then let LilyPond report an error when it encounters one. But
> only then a "fatal" one when it actually forces LilyPond to stop.

For any _correct_ input, LilyPond is eventually forced to stop.

> It is in no way a fatal error to have \version "2.19.39" in a file and
> compile it with 2.19.38. It just exposes a *certain* risk of problems.

It wasn't the topic whether or not a version mismatch should be a
warning or an error.

The choice to make it an error was _deliberate_ since we figured out the
hard way that people will ignore warnings and instead report every
change of syntax to the bug list.  Making a version mismatch an error
rather than a warning was not a decision dictated by logic but by
expediency.

However, Andrew basically tells us that he will also ignore errors
unless LilyPond searches for all files that the user could have expected
to be output from a run of LilyPond and deletes them.

I don't think it makes sense to go there.  If users are not willing to
accept an error message and error code, then I don't think we should try
to additionally sabotage LilyPond's attempts at salvaging something
useful in the output.

-- 
David Kastrup