[ruby-core:112362] [Ruby master Feature#19197] Add Exception#root_cause

11 Feb 2023

      Issue #19197 has been updated by rubyFeedback (mark potter).

I do not have any particular opinion on the issue as such,
but on the issue of object.cause.cause.cause
(object.method1.method1.method1). From an API point of view
I think this is normally not "the ruby way" when it leads
to repetition. Usually ruby favours being expressive in 
what one does, e. g. collection.take(10) or .first(20) or
.last(30).
...
you wouldn't want an error report for every one of these
lines.
If I understand it correctly you prefer more control over
the error report? If so then I think that makes sense; mame
improved on the error feedback ruby gives, if I recall 
correctly. I now get a lot more information about where an
error happens, including a follow-up trace. I don't remember
this in the ruby 1.8.x era, for instance.

----------------------------------------
Feature #19197: Add Exception#root_cause
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/19197#change-101806

* Author: AMomchilov (Alexander Momchilov)
* Status: Open
* Priority: Normal
----------------------------------------
### Description

I would like to add a `#root_cause` method to `Exception`.

It returns the last exception in linked-list of causality chain, that is, the original exception (whose own `cause` is `nil`).

### Example

```ruby
e = begin
    raise 'a' # This is the root cause
  rescue => a
    begin
      raise 'b'
    rescue => b
      begin
        raise 'c' # This is the outermost cause assigned to `e`
      rescue => c
        c
      end
    end
  end

p(e)                   # => #<RuntimeError: c>
p(e.cause)             # => #<RuntimeError: b>
p(e.cause.cause)       # => #<RuntimeError: a>
p(e.cause.cause.cause) # => nil

p(e.root_cause)        # => #<RuntimeError: a>
p(e.root_cause.cause)  # => nil
```

### Motivation

There are some kinds of exceptions that can occur all over the place (and might be wrapped by arbitrarily many middlemen), but are attributable to a singular global cause. For example, a database outage could raise exceptions in almost every line of business logic of an app that uses ActiveRecord models.

Fundamentally, you wouldn't want an error report for every one of these lines. You'd want to look at the root cause, and bucket all SQL-connection issues into a single report, regardless of where they surface.

### Implementation

Draft PR: https://github.com/ruby/ruby/pull/6913

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