Not super helpful error messages

[anssiko]

pr-push.yml fails with:

 Document on track but no previous version.
        Plugin: w3c/headers
          Hint: Add [previousMaturity](https://respec.org/docs/#previousMaturity) and [previousPublishDate](https://respec.org/docs/#previousPublishDate) to ReSpec’s config.

via https://github.com/w3c/device-posture/runs/2727557242?check_suite_focus=true

@xfq

[xfq]

It seems that ReSpec (rather than Pubrules) emitted the error.

@marcoscaceres Can I get a pointer to more information on this error?

[xfq]

The problem seems to have been fixed. Closing.

[anssiko]

Thanks @xfq!

[marcoscaceres]

Sorry, I totally missed this! Glad it was resolved.

[marcoscaceres]

Oh! about this error... sometimes, publishing to TR more than once per day fails. It's a known spec-prod issue.

If it happens, rerunning the action again sometimes fixes it... worst case, run the action again the next day and it works 😇

[anssiko]

Thanks for the tip, that explains why this was hard to repro.

It'd be nice if this could fail with an informative error message.

Meanwhile, let's say one TR publication a day is a spec-prod feature and not a bug 😀

[marcoscaceres]

It'd be nice if this could fail with an informative error message.

I think this was the original:

 Document on track but no previous version.
        Plugin: w3c/headers
          Hint: Add [previousMaturity](https://respec.org/docs/#previousMaturity) and [previousPublishDate](https://respec.org/docs/#previousPublishDate) to ReSpec’s config.

We should probably reword that as:

Document is on the on W3C's Recommendation track, but it is lacking a "previous version" link.

And the Plugin should be moved last. The hint test is ok, I think.

@anssiko, wdyt? Or are the errors not helpful at all?

[marcoscaceres]

Reopening and moving to ReSpec...

[marcoscaceres]

@anssiko, any "real user" feedback you can provide us would be super helpful. Will do our best to improve things.

[anssiko]

I was actually reacting to "publishing to TR more than once per day fails" case. I was wondering if spec-prod could detect that and warn the operation might fail, if that's the case. Optimally, it wouldn't fail.

[marcoscaceres]

"publishing to TR more than once per day fails" case.

Ah, it does report a fail, but the errors are also quite cryptic:
w3c/spec-prod#82

[sidvishnoi]

publishing to TR more than once per day fails

That shouldn't be happening. It's probably some other bug where spec-prod didn't set right right respecConfig. Will investigate.

[marcoscaceres]

We did a bunch of work on this in #3637. Closing for now and we can fix up any specifically unhelpful ones.