finer-grained location info for error messages, strack traces: line number, column number range

[nsajko]

a.jl:

1 +
2 +
3 +
error() +
5

b.jl:

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + error() + 5

REPL session:

julia> include("a.jl")  # It'd be nice to get a more accurate line number here, i.e., "4" instead of "1"
ERROR: LoadError: 
Stacktrace:
 [1] error()
   @ Base ./error.jl:44
 [2] top-level scope
   @ /tmp/asdoi98uz/a.jl:1
 [3] include(fname::String)
   @ Main ./sysimg.jl:38
 [4] top-level scope
   @ REPL[1]:1
in expression starting at /tmp/asdoi98uz/a.jl:1

julia> include("b.jl")  # It'd be nice to get a column number range here for the offending call, `error()`
ERROR: LoadError: 
Stacktrace:
 [1] error()
   @ Base ./error.jl:44
 [2] top-level scope
   @ /tmp/asdoi98uz/b.jl:1
 [3] include(fname::String)
   @ Main ./sysimg.jl:38
 [4] top-level scope
   @ REPL[2]:1
in expression starting at /tmp/asdoi98uz/b.jl:1

julia> versioninfo()
Julia Version 1.11.0-DEV.1389
Commit ecc14ca3888 (2024-01-27 15:45 UTC)
Build Info:
  Official https://julialang.org/ release
Platform Info:
  OS: Linux (x86_64-linux-gnu)
  CPU: 8 × AMD Ryzen 3 5300U with Radeon Graphics
  WORD_SIZE: 64
  LLVM: libLLVM-16.0.6 (ORCJIT, znver2)
Threads: 1 default, 0 interactive, 1 GC (on 8 virtual cores)

Related issues: #33735, #38531, #50834

[Keno]

The way to do this is to change all source locations to byte offset and use the parser tree from the new parser to get more info lazily.

[timholy]

Agreed. With the new parser, planned work on lowering, and #52415, on the horizon we can finally see a good solution to a lot of significant usability issues.