Hacker News Reader

While useful, I can't see how it could ensure that the right version of the source code is being presented to the user.

In theory, it could analyse all versions of a library, and then choose only those versions that could lead to the given stack trace. Even that would be error prone, and may lead to multiple results.

Setting up an IDE would take extra time, but would be the best way to debug the exception.

View on HN

Finding the right version of the source code is definitely a challenge. However, it's a solvable one. What you're suggesting is actually what ExceptError does. It indexes all versions of each library, and uses context from the entire stack-trace, including line-numbers, method-names, etc, to find the exact match.

Agree that IDE is the best way, especially when it comes to Java, but it's not always possible. For example you may be debugging distributed systems in production.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com