Re: The poor quality of Emacs's backtraces

[Christopher Dimech <dimech@gmx.com>]

> Sent: Friday, July 14, 2023 at 1:35 AM
> From: "Alan Mackenzie" <acm@muc.de>
> To: emacs-devel@gnu.org
> Subject: The poor quality of Emacs's backtraces
>
> Hello, Emacs.
>
> On running the test suite (make check) on my development version, I
> recently got lots of errors and backtraces in the files.log.  This is
> fair enough.
>
> What's not good is the message that precedes (or, in the test suite
> follows) the backtrace.  In the current instance, it looks like:
>
>    Test test-kill-buffer-auto-save-delete-no condition:
>     (wrong-type-argument listp
>                          #[257 "\300\211\2!\262\1\207" [yes-or-no-p] 4
>                                "\n\n(fn ARG124 &optional)" t])
>    FAILED  376/406  test-kill-buffer-auto-save-delete-no (0.012664 sec)
>
> So, this says that _something_ wasn't a list, without telling me what the
> something was.  It may have been the value of a variable, or the result
> returned from evaluating a form, but the message gives no clue.
>
> It says "wrong-type-argument", but doesn't say why it's wrong.  It
> doesn't disclose which primitive detected the fault, though Emacs could
> easily do this.
>
> It doesn't make any effort to say _where_ the bug was detected.  If
> you're lucky, it might be somewhere in the first function reported in the
> backtrace, but only if there aren't any frivolous condition-case's in the
> code which render any remaining backtrace useless.  But even if you know
> what function it's in, unless that function is short, you don't know
> _where_ in that function the error has occurred.  The Emacs backtrace
> functions don't output any coordinates.  This could be done easily, for
> example by printing the current position and the total length for a
> compiled function (something like 56/120), or by outputting neighbouring
> forms for an interpreted function.  This would be helpful information for
> debugging.
>
> As already said, the actual backtrace itself is often of little use, due
> to the frivolous use of condition-case's.  That's even if you stop the
> test suite truncating every line at ~70 characters.  (Why is this done?)

I quite agree that improvements to the backtrace information are needed.
It is still enormously difficult to rapidly identify the actual line of code
causing the problem from the information provided.  Most times identification
is done only because of experience than anything else - certainly not a
productive way to work.

----- Christopher Dimech
Administrator General - Naiad Informatics - Gnu Project

Society has become too quick to pass judgement and declare someone
Persona Non-Grata, the most extreme form of censure a country can
bestow.

In a new era of destructive authoritarianism, I support Richard
Stallman.  Times of great crisis are also times of great
opportunity.  I call upon you to make this struggle yours as well !

https://stallmansupport.org/
https://www.fsf.org/     https://www.gnu.org


> Currently the first few lines of my backtrace look like:
>
>     Test test-kill-buffer-auto-save-delete-no backtrace:
>   {comp-spill-lap-function} #f(compiled-function (form) "Byte-compile FORM, spilling data from the byte compiler." #<bytecode 0xa35cf62c052f23d>)((lambda (arg124 &optional) (let ((f #'yes-or-no-p)) (funcall f arg124))))
>   apply({comp-spill-lap-function} #f(compiled-function (form) "Byte-compile FORM, spilling data from the byte compiler." #<bytecode 0xa35cf62c052f23d>) (lambda (arg124 &optional) (let ((f #'yes-or-no-p)) (funcall f arg124))) nil)
>   comp-spill-lap-function((lambda (arg124 &optional) (let ((f #'yes-or-no-p)) (funcall f arg124))))
>   comp-spill-lap((lambda (arg124 &optional) (let ((f #'yes-or-no-p)) (funcall f arg124))))
>   comp--native-compile((lambda (arg124 &optional) (let ((f #'yes-or-no-p)) (funcall f arg124))) nil "/tmp/test-nativecomp-cache-Dmx7GP/30.0.50-7a56150c...")
>   comp-trampoline-compile(yes-or-no-p)
>   comp-subr-trampoline-install(yes-or-no-p)
>   {test-overlay-regions} #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode -0x1be13de621723a1f>)()
>   test-kill-buffer-auto-save(110 {test-kill-buffer-auto-save} #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode -0x1c782c52a4f77189>))
>   {test-kill-buffer-auto-save} #f(compiled-function () #<bytecode 0xeb411732a4fb03f>)()
>
> (The symbols in braces are an enhancement I'm currently working on to give
> more information for anonymous functions.)
>
> If anybody can match up the "wrong-type-argument" message to this
> backtrace, they're a better hacker than me - What precisely in
> comp-spill-lap-function is using some unknown list primitive on the byte
> compiled function?
>
> So, on the principle of using ALL the information that is available, we
> might as well disassemble that byte-compiled function, which might give a
> clue:
>
>     \300   byte-constant yes-or-no-p
>     \211   byte-dup
>     \2     stack-ref 2 ; ARG124
>     !      byte-call 1
>     \262\1 stack-set 1
>     \207   return
>
> .... but not much of one.  The function is calling yes-or-no-p with its
> parameter, and then I think it's returning yes-or-no-p's result.  Though
> why it's duplicating yes-or-no-p at the top of the stack, then
> overwriting it with the result is unclear.  In the test
> test-kill-buffer-auto-save-delete-no, fancy things are done with cl-letf
> on (symbol-function 'yes-or-no-p), so the disassembled function above
> probably has something to do with that.
>
> It's worth pointing out that there doesn't seem to be a way to get Emacs
> to disassemble a function, only a symbol with a function value.
>
> ########################################################################
>
> I will eventually track down the cause of the above bug.  But it will
> have taken me MUCH longer than it would have done, had the missing
> information actually been present in the backtrace.  I think I might not
> be alone in wishing for these things to be improved.
>
> So I propose that the quality of our backtraces be improved, and nominate
> myself as the person to do the work.
>
> --
> Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).
>
>