Hi!
Frank> However, I think *in general* the space of error checks is Frank> "multi-dimensional" and cannot easily be devided into Frank> interesting and non-interesting checks by a one-dimensional Frank> threshold.
Juergen> Sure - and smilint fortunately makes all the error levels Juergen> configurable. But still, having a default which conforms to Juergen> guidelines document makes life for many people simpler. The Juergen> real question is (and I perhaps was not clear enough about Juergen> this) is whether we really need a new error level 7 or Juergen> whether the same objective could be achieved by using the Juergen> existing error level 6 for "esoteric" messages and simply Juergen> recommend that reviewers use level 5 for their reviews. This Juergen> approach would mean that we reclassify some existing level 6 Juergen> messages to level 5 messages.
Juergen> Looking at some of the current level 6 messages, I actually Juergen> think they should be raised to level 4 Juergen> (e.g. ERR_EMPTY_ORGANIZATION et. al.) so perhaps sticking Juergen> with just 6 levels is not even a bad idea...
That's also fine with me. With the current level descriptions, I cannot say what the real distinction between 5 and 6 should be. I have just a clear understanding about 0..5 and I don't care about further levels.
0 internal error, no recovery possible, 1 major SMI/SPPI error, recovery somehow possible but may lead to severe problems, 2 SMI/SPPI error, probably tolerated by some implementations, 3 SMI/SPPI error, tolerated by many implementations, 4 something which is recommended to be changed, 5 something that might be ok, but might not be recommended under some circumstances, 6 just a notice.
I agree, that the list in error.c should be revised carefully. In a number of cases levels should be adjusted and error tags should be added.
Another idea that came to my mind, is to add a much more verbose description to errors, since for errors like "index element `%s::%s' of row `%s' should but cannot have a size restriction" I would wonder if people get this error and do NOT ask what it means. :-)
-frank