"The" solution is not macros. The solution is what is provided by the language. If you are calling a bunch of different functions that return different error ty

"The" solution is not macros. The solution is what is provided by the language. If you are calling a bunch of different functions that return different error types then you either have to map them manually (using map_err) or you can create your own error type and implement From<XYZError> to automatically lift into your own error type. I agree that it is a lot of boilerplate which is why there are good libraries for generating the boilerplate with macros. But the underlying mechanism is not really obscure. It is covered quite well in the rust book (https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch09-02-recoverable-errors-with-result.html https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch09-02-recoverable-errors-wi...).