osCommerce Online Merchant v3.0 Alpha 5 introduces a strict level of error reporting directly in the core framework. This is performed by setting the PHP error reporting setting to E_ALL and by setting the MySQL sql_mode to STRICT_ALL_TABLES at runtime.
All warnings and errors are logged in a text file located in the “work” directory and can be easily viewed in the Administration Tool -> Tools -> Error Log application and summary module.
This is the only Administration Tool application where it’s a good sign when it doesn’t show anything. It gives a nice feeling knowing that any sort of warning or error in the core framework has been checked for, from uninitialized PHP variables to problems with MySQL queries.
Setting the error reporting at such strict levels ensures a high quality of coding standards is kept in the core framework and passes this along to add-ons that are developed and installed.
This makes it easier for developers working on addons where they can see where warnings and errors are occuring in what they have been working on, and motivates them to fix the problems to improve the quality of the finalized work.
A configuration parameter will be introduced in v3.0 Beta 1 to disable the output of PHP warnings and errors on the catalog frontend. This allows the output of warnings and errors to occur under development environments, and to be disabled on production servers.