[FFmpeg-devel] [PATCH] avutil/error: Provide better feedback about unknown error codes

[Andrew Sayers]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2024 at 05:45:24PM +0200, Marton Balint wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 15 Jul 2024, Andrew Sayers wrote:
> 
> > AVERROR messages should always be less than zero,
> > and are usually based on three or four ASCII characters.
> > 
> > For error codes that aren't explicitly handled by error.c (e.g. FFERROR_REDO),
> > print the ASCII code so the user has a little more information.
> 
> All ffmpeg internal error codes (including the ones having some special tag
> representation) should be handled by error.c. The user should never receive
> FFERROR_REDO, that is an internal error code, it should never reach the
> user. Therefore I see no benefit in disclosing the error bytes, because that
> is not the proper fix.
> 
> Regards,
> Marton

So it sounds like this patch is addressing two separate issues:

1. any messages caught by the test in the patch represent a bug in FFmpeg
   * how about I modify this patch to ask the user to report the bug?
   * would the ASCII error code help with triage?
2. FFERROR_REDO should be added to error.c
   * let me know if I should submit a separate patch for this