Deploy button in editor does not report errors

[rabbah]

i created an action which failed to deploy (controller misconfiguration) but no error was given in the shell; inspecting the console logs showed Uncaught (in promise) OpenWhiskError with a meaningful error message which clued me in that I didn't configure my controller correctly.

the shell should not silently fail to deploy but perhaps report an error somewhere obvious - wdyt?

[starpit]

agreed! you did a wsk action create foo bar.js or ?

and what did you see in the repl/command output?

[rabbah]

i used new x --kind nodejs:8 (but was missing the kind on the backend).
there was no ouptut on the repl side.
the only indicator that something was off is that the editor didn't change at all after clicking deploy.

[starpit]

oh, i see now. the error was when you clicked the Deploy button. if so, then yes! this is a large gap. the underlying problem here is that the Deploy button is not a good shell citizen; i.e. it initiates a side-effecting operation without involving the REPL, and hence it either needs to invent its own "head", or it fails to report status in the absence of a head (as is the case now).

[starpit]

similarly, if you are editing a composition, and the composition has parse errors... these, too, fail silently right now.

[starpit]

actually, we already have some error reporting capability, as show in the screenshot. (even that is incomplete, as the text of the error message is only visible in the tooltip of the red dot, but it's functional, at lest)

so it sounds like the issue reported initially is indeed more one of error handling, than error reporting capability