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[sieve] Poll: how to report Sieve runtime errors to the user?

2010-08-24 05:11:49
 Hi,

I attended the last meeting in Maastricht through XMPP. As I explained there, I feel that something is currently missing in the Sieve world: a standard means of handling and reporting runtime errors to the user. It was suggested to ask around how people currently implement this and, possibly, write up a best-practices document. I promised to perform this task, since I was the one coining the issue in the first place. Now I finally have the time to put this on the list.

Concretely, I'm talking about the implementation of the following requirement in RFC5228, at the end of Section 2.10.6:

"When an error happens, implementations MUST notify the user that an error occurred and which actions (if any) were taken, and do an implicit keep."

The RFC doesn't specify how this is to be implemented and, particularly for virtual users, this is an interesting design problem. Therefore, I would like to invite implementors on this list to report their current approach. We can then discuss the benefits and limitations of the various reported implementations and exchange ideas on possible alternatives.

The reason I brought this up is that my own implementation is currently very limited and unsuitable for virtual users: it writes an error log file in the directory where the main active script is located (typically in the user home directory).

The alternative approaches/ideas I've seen/had thus far include:

- disable the offending script and e-mail the script owner to report that there was an error, and that their script is disabled until they go and fix it (Barry) - file a message containing the error report, e.g. in a special IMAP folder, for each failed delivery. Clearly, this can explode into a large number of messages when the script is fundamentally broken. This needs some mechanism to avoid reporting the identical problem for subsequent deliveries. - extend ManageSieve with a means to get notified about runtime errors and a means to retrieve (and possibly configure) runtime logs.

Regards,

Stephan





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