[Live-devel] Graceful handling of socket error

[Jeremy Noring]

On Wed, Sep 8, 2010 at 2:58 PM, Ross Finlayson <finlayson at live555.com>wrote:

>  I am suggesting the call to abort() in the function
> BasicTaskScheduler::SingleStep() at line 95 in BasicTaskScheduler.cpp to be
> replace with something that is less destructive (C++ exception?) since a
> socket error can happen for legitimate reasons (remote closed, ...).
>
>
> Perhaps, although my intention for this call to "abort()" (and others in
> the code) was that it be a "should never get called" situation.  The
> preceding "if" statement is supposed to catch the small set of error codes
> that we expect to see in this situation.
>
> So, my question is: What specific error code(s) are you seeing in this
> situation?  (Also, are you running Windows, or a Unix system?)
>

IMO, it's generally bad form for a _library_ to call abort() or exit(); it
basically means some internal library error is more important than anything
that could possibly be going on in the actual application, which is highly
unlikely.  Our application does a lot more than just stream video; to have
our RTSP server library drop the whole process is a pretty thuggish method
to communicate failure. These calls should be reserved for application code
itself.  I think you're better off A) attempting to recover or B) crashing
outright or C) returning some error to the application or even D) doing
nothing.

I would not consider using C++ exceptions, they're an architectural disaster
in my not-so-humble opinion (and particularly so with embedded platforms,
there are a few "gotchas," see
https://developer.mozilla.org/en/C___Portability_Guide for more info).
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