Re: [boost] [outcome] Change semantics on UB from peer review agreed semantics?

On 13/09/2018 09:48, Andrzej Krzemienski wrote:

template <typename T> using resultC = result; // the above will be *UB* on value from valueless, because default_policy is UB for unknown (to the framework) types.

The fourth case is described as it works today. The proposal in this thread is to change the fourth case so that default_policy fails to compile when used for unknown types.

That seems sensible to me. In my view it is always superior to choose fail-to-compile over UB whenever possible, at least for obviously silly code. And "quietly" switching from throw semantics to UB is probably not a good idea, as you pointed out. *Having said that*, if I'm understanding correctly, this sounds like it would mean that you won't be able to use a custom error_type with Outcome unless you either: 1. Declare some "this is how you throw an exception for this error_type" method (presumably a template specialisation?) 2. Only ever use it with some non-default policy (that either never throws or has user-implemented code to throw). Is that correct? (Or would #1 always be required regardless of usage?) If so, while I'm not sure whether that's enough to change my mind, it does make me a little hesitant about adding another hurdle. On the *other* other hand, it wouldn't be a silly idea to have a generic "throw this error_type" method. system_error itself was somewhat trying to be that generic method, but with the caveat of only supporting plain enum error_types. Perhaps boost::throw_error, which is expected to internally construct an appropriate exception based on its argument type and then call boost::throw_exception?