The retryable writes pseudocode does not mention what should happen if there's an error getting a connection from the selected server's pool. The retryable reads pseudocode explicitly calls connection = server.getConnection at the very beginning and does not surround this call in a try/catch, so errors here will be propagated without retries. Also, the prose describing the pseudocode in both specs does not mention this case.

From talking to Jeremy, it seems like we want to propagate connection pool checkout errors to the user without any retries and this should be clarified in both the pseudocode and prose in both specs.

CC jmikola