Add graceful handling of malformed YAML config files with clear error messages

[Copilot]

Plan: Add graceful handling of malformed YAML files

• Explore the repository and understand current implementation
• Run existing tests to ensure they pass
• Test current behavior with malformed YAML (crashes with stack trace)
• Add error handling to config.py to catch YAML parsing errors
• Add clear error messages with filename, line number, and issue description
• Add logging to capture configuration errors
• Create tests for malformed YAML handling
• Run all tests to ensure nothing is broken
• Update documentation if needed
• Resolve merge conflicts with main branch

Summary

Successfully implemented graceful handling of malformed YAML configuration files with clear, actionable error messages. Merge conflicts with main branch have been resolved.

Changes Made

Code Changes (chatrixcd/config.py):

• Added logging and sys imports for error handling
• Wrapped yaml.safe_load() in try-except block to catch yaml.YAMLError
• Extract and display detailed error information:
  • Configuration file path
  • Line and column number where error occurred
  • Problem description (e.g., "expected , but found ''")
  • Context of the parsing error
• Added separate exception handler for file I/O errors (permissions, etc.)
• Exit with status code 1 on configuration errors
• Merged: New greeting configuration fields from main branch

Test Coverage (tests/test_config.py):

• Test for malformed YAML with missing closing quote
• Test for malformed YAML with unclosed bracket
• Test for malformed YAML with invalid indentation
• Test for unreadable config file (permission errors)
• Merged: Tests for greeting configuration from main branch
• All 11 config tests pass successfully

Documentation Updates:

• docs/support.md: Added detailed explanation of YAML error messages with example output
• docs/configuration.md: Updated troubleshooting section to mention automatic error detection
• CHANGELOG.md: Documented the improvement in the Unreleased section, merged with changes from main

Merge Resolution

Resolved conflicts in:

• CHANGELOG.md: Combined both "Improved" (YAML error handling) and "Fixed" (encrypted rooms) sections
• tests/test_config.py: Kept all tests from both branches

Example Error Output

Before:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
  ...
yaml.parser.ParserError: while parsing a block mapping
  in "/tmp/test.yaml", line 2, column 3
  expected <block end>, but found '<scalar>'
  in "/tmp/test.yaml", line 7, column 9

After:

ERROR: Failed to parse YAML configuration file 'config.yaml'
  Error at line 7, column 9
  Problem: expected <block end>, but found '<scalar>'
  Context: while parsing a block mapping

The error messages are now user-friendly and provide actionable information for fixing configuration issues.

Original prompt

Add graceful handling of malformed yaml files, with clear output as to why the config.yaml file couldn't not parse.

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[CJFWeatherhead]

@copilot Resolve the merge conflicts

[Copilot]

@copilot Resolve the merge conflicts

Resolved merge conflicts with main branch in commit 9753bea.

Conflicts resolved:

• CHANGELOG.md: Combined both the "Improved" section (YAML error handling) and "Fixed" section (encrypted rooms support)
• tests/test_config.py: Kept all tests from both branches - 4 YAML error handling tests + 3 greeting configuration tests

All 11 config tests pass successfully. The YAML error handling feature works correctly with the new greeting configuration fields from main.