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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VFS-508?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=13862741#comment-13862741
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Shevek commented on VFS-508:
----------------------------
It's entirely recoverable. An IOException in my networking systems does not
cause the application to exit, it just waits and retries; perhaps a router was
down. An IOException in my GUI does not cause the entire application to exit.
It just causes a particular button press to have failed, and show an error
dialog.
In order to implement simple behaviour like that, checked exceptions are
expected. I spend my life writing distributed networking systems, and shipping
them to customers. Errors and exceptions are the rule, not the exception, as it
were. In any situation like that, I want to know every possible error that the
code can throw. Unchecked exceptions are fine for local hacks, but nothing else.
If you really want to see how exceptions need to be handled in distributed
systems, I suggest you look at Hystrix. Of course that comes with a thread
transition cost every time it's used, so one wants to avoid it where a simpler
case will satisfy. Retries are handled using C*'s RetryStrategy. The point of
checked exceptions is to allow people to write robust applications.
> Change FileSystemException to inherit from a RuntimeException, and not
> IOException (patch attached)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Key: VFS-508
> URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/VFS-508
> Project: Commons VFS
> Issue Type: Improvement
> Reporter: Shant Stepanian
> Attachments: changeFileSystemToRuntime.patch
>
>
> I'd like to see if we can FileSystemException to inherit from a
> RuntimeException, and not IOException
> I searched the JIRA and didn't see any old tickets referring to this, so I'll
> bring it up here
> _The reason_
> The reason would go back to the whole "Runtime vs. Checked" exception debate,
> and I do prefer the RuntimeException argument that with those, you have the
> choice on whether to declare the try/catch block upon usage, whereas Checked
> exceptions force that on you
> In particular, I bring this up because I feel it hurts the usability of the
> API to have all operations as a checked exception. I recently looked to
> convert my code from using the regular Java JDK file api to the VFS api, and
> I found that in a number of places, I now have to add a try/catch block to
> handle a checked exception where I previously didn't have to (e.g.
> File.listFiles() vs. FileObject.getChildren(), new File("myFile") vs.
> VFS.getManager().resolveFile("myFile"))
> Having one less impediment to migrate would make it easier to adopt for more
> people. As a frame of reference, Hibernate did make a change like this to
> convert HibernateException from checked to runtime, and it was fine for them
> _Patch and Impact of Change_
> I've attached a patch of the change - you can see it is very small, and the
> code still compiles. I ran a test locally and it failed on some of the
> external-resource-related bits; I can follow up on this, but would like to
> first get your approval on this ticket before proceeding w/ any more work
> In terms of client changes - this would only impact clients that happened to
> explicitly expect an IOException in their catch block, and not directly the
> FileSystemException. (this affected one piece of code within VFS itself, but
> could affect clients).
> But I believe that this still would be a beneficial change, as it would make
> all clients' code cleaner and make it easier to adopt
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