Structured Warnings

This is an implementation of Daniel Berger's proposal of structured warnings for Ruby. They provide dynamic suppression and activation, as well as, an inheritance hierarchy to model their relations. This library preserves the old warn signature, but additionally allows a raise-like use.

For more information on the usage and benefits of this library have a look at the inspiring article at O'Reilly.

www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2008/02/structured_warnings_now.html (link to web archive - O'Reilly took it down)

Installation & Compatibility

gem install structured_warnings

structured_warnings works with all interpreters, it was tested with.

• Ruby 1.8-2.2

• Rubinius 2.4

• JRuby 1.7

Please let me know, of any other compatibilities or file a bug for any incompatibilities.

Example Usage

To get you started - here is a short example

In order to use structured_warnings in library code, use the following code.

# in lib/...
require 'structured_warnings'

class Foo
  def old_method
    warn DeprecatedMethodWarning, 'This method is deprecated. Use new_method instead'
    # Do stuff
  end
end

# in test/...
require 'test/unit'
require 'structured_warnings'

class FooTests < Test::Unit::TestCase
  def setup
    @foo = Foo.new
  end

  def test_old_method_emits_deprecation_warning
    assert_warn(DeprecatedMethodWarning){ @foo.old_method }
  end
end

DeprecatedMethodWarning is only one of multiple predefined warning types. You may add your own types by subclassing Warning if you like.

Client code of your library will look as follows:

require "foo"

foo = Foo.new
foo.old_method # => will print
               # ... `old_method' : This method is deprecated. Use new_method instead (DeprecatedMethodWarning)

But the main difference to the standard warning concept shipped with ruby, is that the client is able to selectively disable certain warnings s/he is aware of and not willing to fix.

DeprecatedMethodWarning.disable # Globally disable warnings about deprecated methods!

foo.old_method # => will print nothing

DeprecatedMethodWarning.enable # Reenable warnings again.

And there is an even more powerful option for your clients, the can selectively disable warnings in a dynamic block scope.

# Don't bug me about deprecated method warnings within this block, I know
# what I'm doing.
#
DeprecatedMethodWarning.disable do
  foo.old_method
end

These settings are scoped to the local thread (and all threads spawned in the block scope) and automatically reset after the block.

Detailed Documentation

Have closer look at the RDoc of StructuredWarnings::Kernel, Warning and Warning::ClassMethods.

Part of this library is a set of different warnings:

• Warning

  • StandardWarning

  • DeprecationWarning

    • DeprecatedMethodWarning

    • DeprecatedSignatureWarning

You are encourage to use your own subclasses of Warning to give as much feedback to your users as possible.

Resources

• Inspiring article

• Implementation Highlights

• Project’s website

• API doc

• Build status

How to submit patches

In order to submit patches, please fork the repository on GitHub, add your patches to your own copy and send a “Pull Request” afterwards. I will then try to add your submissions as soon as possible. Patches containing corresponding tests are always welcome.

Bug reports or general feature requests should be added using GitHub Issues.

Known Issues

Although the library transparently coorperates with Ruby's built-in Kernel#warn, it may not override rb_warn which is used internally to emit “method redefined”, “void context”, and “parenthesis” warnings. They may not be manipulated by structured_warnings.

License

This code is free to use under the terms of the MIT license.

:include: License.txt