Better formatting for config errors from modules (#8874)

The idea is that the parse_config method of extension modules can raise either a ConfigError or a JsonValidationError,
and it will be magically turned into a legible error message. There's a few components to it:

* Separating the "path" and the "message" parts of a ConfigError, so that we can fiddle with the path bit to turn it
   into an absolute path.
* Generally improving the way ConfigErrors get printed.
* Passing in the config path to load_module so that it can wrap any exceptions that get caught appropriately.

2 files changed, 17 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/synapse/config/_base.py b/synapse/config/_base.py

index 85f65da4d9..2931a88207 100644
--- a/synapse/config/_base.py
+++ b/synapse/config/_base.py
@@ -23,7 +23,7 @@ import urllib.parse
 from collections import OrderedDict
 from hashlib import sha256
 from textwrap import dedent
-from typing import Any, Callable, List, MutableMapping, Optional
+from typing import Any, Callable, Iterable, List, MutableMapping, Optional
 
 import attr
 import jinja2
@@ -32,7 +32,17 @@ import yaml
 
 
 class ConfigError(Exception):
-    pass
+    """Represents a problem parsing the configuration
+
+    Args:
+        msg:  A textual description of the error.
+        path: Where appropriate, an indication of where in the configuration
+           the problem lies.
+    """
+
+    def __init__(self, msg: str, path: Optional[Iterable[str]] = None):
+        self.msg = msg
+        self.path = path
 
 
 # We split these messages out to allow packages to override with package
diff --git a/synapse/config/_base.pyi b/synapse/config/_base.pyi

index b8faafa9bd..ed26e2fb60 100644
--- a/synapse/config/_base.pyi
+++ b/synapse/config/_base.pyi
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-from typing import Any, List, Optional
+from typing import Any, Iterable, List, Optional
 
 from synapse.config import (
     api,
@@ -35,7 +35,10 @@ from synapse.config import (
     workers,
 )
 
-class ConfigError(Exception): ...
+class ConfigError(Exception):
+    def __init__(self, msg: str, path: Optional[Iterable[str]] = None):
+        self.msg = msg
+        self.path = path
 
 MISSING_REPORT_STATS_CONFIG_INSTRUCTIONS: str
 MISSING_REPORT_STATS_SPIEL: str