ADR: Custom Exceptions Patterns

Signed-off-by: Anastas Stoyanovsky <[email protected]>

Author: anastasds

.spellcheck-en-custom.txt

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 Dependabot
 dev
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+discoverability
 ditaa
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 docling
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 src
 Srivastava
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docs/adr-custom-exceptions.md

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+# InstructLab Custom Exceptions Pattern
+
+## Context
+
+The historically pervasive pattern for exception handling during application runtime is to catch internally raised exceptions in the CLI layer and use `click.secho` followed by `click.exceptions.Exit` to display a useful error message to the user before exiting the application. This leaves a risk of intermediate calls between the site of the exception and the user-facing layer changing, leading to missed new exceptions and outdated caught exceptions. A second issue is that of discoverability and verification: given a `click.exceptions.Exit` exception handling, it is not clear from the code where the caught exception originates from in the call stack, and, similarly, given a piece of code that can raise an exception, it is not clear from the local code whether that exception is properly handled in the CLI layer without investigation.
+
+These issues will compound whenever REST APIs begin development.
+
+## Decision
+
+InstructLab will adopt custom exceptions to handle specific faults which are then caught in the user-facing layer (CLI, REST API, &c).
+
+## Status
+
+Accepted
+
+## Consequences
+
+* Verification of exhaustive error handling will be clear within a code section that can raise.
+* CLI layer error handling will be easy to understand and trace.
+* Whenever REST APIs are developed, HTTP error codes should be easier to be associated with specific exceptions.
+* It should be easier to compose useful error messages for the user.
+* It should be easier to correctly scope exception handling (consider a `URLError` raised about SSL verification, for example, versus a custom `SSlVerificationException`).