Toying with an idea for exception handling.

exception.rb

module MyModule
  class MyModuleError < StandardError
    @@ignore = :warn

    def ok_to_ignore?
      @@ignore
    end

    def self.ok_to_ignore
      @@ignore
    end
    alias ok_to_ignore? ok_to_ignore

    def self.ok_to_ignore=(val)
      @@ignore = val
    end

  end

  class ConfigFileError < GridDataError; end

  module RaiseOrIgnore
    def raise_or_ignore(*args)
      if args[0].kind_of?(Exception) && args[0].respond_to(:ignore_me?) && args[0].ignore_me?
        if args[0].ignore_me? == :silent
          return nil
        else
          warn args.map(&:to_s).join(":")
          return nil
        end
      end
      raise args
    end
  end

  module Kernel
    include RaiseOrIgnore
  end

end

gistfile1.rb

def some_method
  raise_or_ignore MyModuleError, "whoops"
end

MyModule.ok_to_ignore = :silent
some_method #nil

MyModule.ok_to_ignore = true
some_method #nil
#STDERR
#MyModuleError whoops

MyModule.ok_to_ignore = false
some_method
#normal exception raised.

The specific code might not be exactly right yet, I don't want to spend any time on this until I get a better idea of if this is worth pursuing.

But the idea of being able to change some exceptions to just print a warning. or to just fail silently, or to raise an exception, makes my decisions as a gem author easier. I can raise things as warnings most of the time (say an config file is missing), but I can change it to raise the exception if I as a gem consumer decide it should be a show stopper.