Re: Standard scheme for maintainer-only debugging code?

[Nathanael Nerode <neroden at twcny dot rr dot com>]

>I don't think making this a single header is a good idea; it would
>mean that whenever you changed one debugging flag, the dependencies
>would cause the whole compiler to be rebuilt, which would be annoying.

Excellent point.  My macro scheme has essentially the same flaw anyway.

How about simply a convention: debugging code should be guarded by

if (debug_XYZ)

and debug_XYZ should be defined, for all XYZ, in some way which makes
it a constant 0, optimizable out, unless it's altered by a maintainer.

(How should this be done?  In C, declaring constants which can easily be 
made into variables is an odd process, and I'm not quite sure what the 
right magic incantation is.  "const static bool debug_XYZ = 0;" ?)

A standard prefix and declaration makes it possible to do a routine 
check of the CVS tree to make sure none of them are left turned on by 
accident.  

I do worry that there are too many different types of things 
with the  debug_ prefix.  I want a unique prefix.  Perhaps mdbg_ for 
maintainer debug?  Or perhaps use the debug_ prefix for this, and stop 
using it for some of the other things it's used for?  ???

--Nathanael