Question

Under what specific situation is it ok (or even recommended) to present end-users with a StackTrace to their UI on a production system.

There are a large number of websites and SO articles where folks ask if they should show StackTraces to an end user. Not surprisingly, the answers are a resounding “No!”.

For example:

• Java: what information in error stack trace do we typically not wish to show users?
• java : Using printStackTrace in Production Environment
• Should I Print the Exception Stack Trace?
• When to log a stacktrace for a caught exception

However, I recently had a conversation with another developer where I spent a good deal of time posturing why stacktraces shouldn’t be passed to the user via the UI. That discussion had me go back and revisit one of my fundamental (absolute) tenants – the user shall never see a raw StackTrace in production.

I couldn’t find a single compelling reason. However, I’m sure there is valid usecase, and I’d like to either understand it, or feel comfortable continuing to hold fast to my absolute tenant.

Answer 1

You don’t–they’re simply not helpful to a user.

Users get messages. Developers get stack traces, either in the logs, an email, a queue, maybe the rendered HTML when running locally/internally, etc.