error handling

[Richard Mortier <Richard.Mortier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

not the most exciting topic perhaps, but traditionally seems thorny.

i'm trying to fix up ocaml-dns to be both a bit more correct and a bit more 
robust.

aiui, standard ocaml exceptions must not be allowed to propagate up to the 
point where they hit an Lwt thread, as that is Bad.

but there are a number of places in ocaml-dns -- and i expect that this will 
not be uncommon -- where functions raise exceptions indicating things like 
unparseable data (for whatever reason) has been received off the wire.

what i'd normally do here would be to cause current processing to cease, to 
return the unparseable data that caused the error so it can be logged, and 
continue from some suitable point.

my question is- what's the best way to do that under Lwt?

i've tried the following but have some questions:

1/ using raise_lwt instead of raise means that every function in question -- 
often these are subsidiary/helper functions  -- need to start returning 'a 
Lwt.t; does propagating the Lwt-ness all the way through matter at all, or do i 
just need to start doing lots of ">>" to chain things together, rather than 
using ";"?

2/ making return types 'a option rather than 'a -- but this does not work to 
return the unparseable bits

3/ logging the error (via Lwt_json_logger no less!) -- but this does not let me 
indicate that processing should stop at the appropriate place

4/ leaving the standard "raise" exceptions in and trying to be careful to catch 
them -- but this relies on me remembering all the entry points into the library 

currently i'm plumping for 4 but i wondered if the Gods of Ocaml had any better 
suggestions? :)

-- 
Cheers,

R.


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