Re: PATCH partial gcj support for disabling assertion

[David Daney <ddaney at avtrex dot com>]

Per Bothner wrote:

> The attached patch provides a compiler hook for disable or
> enabling assertion.  It does add any new flags or fine-grained
> control, yet:  assertions are enabled if generating class files
> or not optimizing, and disabled if optimizing and generying native
> code.  I think this is a reasonable default; new options can be
> use to override the default - I may add those later.
>
> Note that when assertions are disabled, we still build a tree
> that includes the assertion and the asertion value, so the
> compiler can check for errors.  But because the assertion
> is rewritten to 'false && ASSERTION" it will get optimized out.
> (It least it does this when optimizing; we should verify this
> when we add a flag to disable assertion even when not optimizing.)
>
> Tested in Fedora Core (with Mauve and Jacks); no regressions.
> I'll check this into mainline in a few days if I don't hear objections.

I object!

I want the enabling and disabling of assertions to be independent of 
optimization settings.

It could default to this behavior, but there must be a command line flag 
to override.  Given that this is the case,  why not add the command line 
flag now?

It would probably be a code generation flag.  How about -fassertions and 
-fno-assertions or -fenable-assertions and -fdisable-assertions ?

Of course we also need the ability to turn them off at runtime with a 
flag to the runtime.

David Daney.