[Pkg-phototools-devel] Bug#657173: URL returned error: 404... but say what the error was

[jidanni at jidanni.org]

>>>>> "DF" == Daniel Friesel <derf at finalrewind.org> writes:

DF> Hi,

DF> On Wed, Jan 25, 2012 at 12:27:37AM +0800, jidanni at jidanni.org wrote:
>> Why don't you tell the user what the error message was?!

DF> Because libcurl does not easily tell me, either.

hmm, maybe they should make it easier...

DF> I could write a custom header function to parse the non-number part out of the
DF> status message, but I don't see why it's worth the effort.

>> Some 404s are different than others!

DF> Only in very special cases.
DF> "HTTP 404" means file not found.  As far as I know, HTTP Clients are not even
DF> required to read the non-number part of that status line... at least most I know
DF> don't care about it.

DF> I see that WWWOffle is an exception to this, but wouldn't it be easier to make
DF> it return a different status code for "I am offline and don't know if this
DF> file exists or not"? 404 for unkown content seems somewhat ambiguous to me.

I recall for Wikipedia and WWWOFFLE there was discussion that they
considered that but ended up back with 404.

DF> I may reconsider this later, but for now I won't add more precise status reports
DF> to feh/curl. feh is not a web browser, the http support is more of a convenience
DF> so you don't have to call wget && feh.

Maybe somebody can file a wishlist with libcurl. OK, thanks.