[racket-dev] no backtrace for error in macro

I guess runtime stack traces won't help. It would be nice to see all the locations the syntax went through in its lifetime. Maybe it could be stored as a syntax property?

Although most likely this had been thought of before and rejected for whatever reason.

On 11/08/2011 11:08 AM, Robby Findler wrote:
> I'm sorry. Nothing is coming to mind (and just to be clear, turning on
> stacktraces for the errors won't help, right?).
>
> Robby
>
> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 11:57 AM, Jon Rafkind <rafkind at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>> So is there a more efficient way to debug the issue than looking at the macro debugger that you know of?
>>
>> Also FWIW the error I meant arose from exactly the situation below. I created a new identifier meant to be used as a literal:
>>
>>  (define-syntax my-new-literal (lambda (stx) (raise-syntax-error 'literal "this is a literal meant to be used inside a macro"))
>>
>> And the literal ended up in code outside the intended form that would have consumed it so the literal's syntax error was raised.
>>
>> On 11/08/2011 10:51 AM, Robby Findler wrote:
>>> It isn't clear to me that the stacktrace is actually containing useful
>>> information in such cases. That is, the stack will not tell you which
>>> macro introduced the free identifier, only the code that finds the
>>> identifier (that is, the code that detects free variables).
>>>
>>> Robby
>>>
>>> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 11:46 AM, Jon Rafkind <rafkind at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>>>> Ok. Whats your (the) strategy for debugging these sorts of errors? Yesterday I just stared at the macro debugger output for a while until I saw where an identifier that ultimately raised a syntax error showed up.
>>>>
>>>> On 11/08/2011 10:41 AM, Robby Findler wrote:
>>>>> This is a change I made recently and I put a rationale and explanation
>>>>> in the commit message here:
>>>>>
>>>>>   http://git.racket-lang.org/plt/commit/e1ce0a0d1e6120354ace65dc3fda76d0442fb3a1
>>>>>
>>>>> Robby
>>>>>
>>>>> On Tue, Nov 8, 2011 at 11:30 AM, Jon Rafkind <rafkind at cs.utah.edu> wrote:
>>>>>> When this program is run in DrRacket the error is displayed in the interactions pane with a backtrace icon next to it but if you click that icon the backtrace window is blank. It would be nice to get some sort of backtrace or I suppose in the worst case no backtrace icon should appear.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> #lang racket
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (define-syntax (foo stx) (raise-syntax-error 'foo "dont use foo"))
>>>>>> (define-syntax (bar stx)
>>>>>>  #'(foo))
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (bar)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> _________________________________________________
>>>>>>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>>>>>>  http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/dev
>>>>>>
>>