RFE: Replace "command execution failed" with a more informative error message

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

One thing I've noticed from looking at a bunch of trac tickets is that users will often report their errors as "command execution failed", when in reality, the log and debug output will show something more specific. It'd be useful to replace the "command execution failed" message with something more informative, so that maintainers don't have to go changing this in ticket titles all the time.

[jmroot (Joshua Root)]

What would you suggest? I doubt we can develop an AI that can automatically summarise the actual problem in the log.

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Maybe the error can mention the phase, at least? Although “build failed” is not really any better than “command execution failed”, as far as usefulness goes.

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

Or maybe it could mention what exactly the command was that failed. So instead of just "command execution failed" it could say something like "execution of "make" failed" or something...

[larryv (Lawrence Velázquez)]

Replying to egall@…:

Or maybe it could mention what exactly the command was that failed. So instead of just "command execution failed" it could say something like "execution of "make" failed" or something...

How would we reliably extract the executable name from a given command string?

Honestly, we’re probably going to be editing the ticket anyway, so I’m not sure that this is worth putting effort into.

[neverpanic (Clemens Lang)]

Well, it could just print the failed command completely. That would be a lot more specific, although the commands might actually get pretty long.

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

for cross-referencing purposes, #39836 is similar