When presented with a bug from the field, I also care about finding the path through my code where it occurred, but rarely do I need to know that `foo` called `foo_with_caching` called `foo_with_caching_recursive`. When reading a backtrace, I skip over amounts of "implementation details" to get a big picture. For me, the exact functions / files / line numbers are not relevant, doubly so if I'm working in a situation where the error message isn't tied to a specific git commit and the functions/files/lines have moved over time.
To reiterate my point from above though, my error stacks are all unique — seeing the stack will point me to an exact line in my code where the error occurred, even though I don't include function/file/line as-is.
I don't really agree. Well, I do agree that often if I'm looking at a backtrace, I will be skipping over a lot of stack frames to find the "simplified" path that still is most useful.
But functions? Yep, absolutely need them. Files? Not quite so much, since it's rare that I'd use the same function name between files. (But sure, throw it in anyway.) Line numbers? No, those can be a big help. If a user reports an issue to me, the first thing I will ask them (if they didn't fill out the issue template properly) is what version they're using (and what git hash, if they've self-compiled from a random git checkout). So I can check out the same version on my laptop, and having a line-accurate trace can be very helpful.
> To reiterate my point from above though, my error stacks are all unique
To reiterate mine, my error stacks often aren't unique, and crafting them such that they would be seems like pointless make-work when there are tools can make it so I don't need to care about this.
I really don't get this resistance against including this information. It adds little to binary size and remove little from performance, so why not include it? I agree that backtraces do add a lot to binary size and can murder performance, but this "StackedError" concept with function/file/line information seems like essentially the perfect compromise. Just... include it, and stop worrying about it.
