ConfigurationException is a checked exception; should be unchecked (ie:
subclass of RuntimeException)
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Key: CONFIGURATION-384
URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/CONFIGURATION-384
Project: Commons Configuration
Issue Type: Bug
Components: Events & Notifications
Affects Versions: 1.6
Environment: N/A
Reporter: private
There's a movement in the field to simplify Java development by using unchecked
Exceptions rather than checked Exceptions. Most notably this approach has been
championed by Rod Johnson (J2EE without EJB, Spring Framework) and Bruce Eckels
(Thinking in Java). In the last 2 years, popular libraries like Spring
Framework and Hibernate 3.0 have used unchecked exceptions.
Quote from the DeveloperWorks article listed below:
"Some exceptions are basically secondary return codes (which generally signal
violation of business rules), and some are of the "something went horribly
wrong" variety (such as failure to make a database connection). Johnson
advocates using checked exceptions for the first category (alternative return
codes), and runtime exceptions for the latter category. In the "something went
horribly wrong" category, the motivation is simply to recognize the fact that
no caller is going to effectively handle this exception, so it might as well
get propagated all the way up the stack with the minimum of impact on the
intervening code (and minimize the chance of exception swallowing)."
I have listed this as a bug rather than an improvement as it is common for
developers to simply wrap configuration sections in a try { .. } catch (
ConfigurationException ignore ) {}, which inevitably leads to buggy code
further down the line.Even if the ConfigurationException is caught, it is
likely to be wrapped in a RuntimeException subclass for reporting, which is
also unnecessarily obtuse.
It makes sense for this Exception to be unchecked (RuntimeException subclass)
so that developers can decide whether the exception condition is worthy of
catching or should be allowed to propagate as best suits their application.
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