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From: "Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada
Subject: Re: Any Suggestion How To Accomplish A Debug Macro?
Date: Fri, 2 Jan 2015 22:13:32 +0100
Organization: cbb software GmbH
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Date: 2015-01-02T22:13:32+01:00
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On Fri, 02 Jan 2015 21:37:47 +0100, J-P. Rosen wrote:

> Le 30/12/2014 23:11, Randy Brukardt a écrit :
>> But I don't think there is much reason (outside of the memory-constrained 
>> embedded system, or the system that has to be formally proved or validated) 
>> to ever removing the tracing. It's important to be able to turn it off, of 
>> course, but the runtime cost of it being off is so minimal (primarily 
>> caching/paging effects) that removing it isn't worth the effort. (And if you 
>> plan to keep it around forever, you'll spend more time making the traces 
>> make sense in the future -- which typically pays off very quickly.)
> 
> I fully agree with that.

This is all true, conditional compilation is rubbish, IMO.

However, it would be interesting to consider how tracing could be better
supported. I mean options:

1. To have zero-cost turned off tracing, e.g. some code modification
techniques or maybe something else. After all we have zero-cost exceptions,
why not tracing.

2. Ideas for the compilation units structure modification which would allow
to have tracing code physically separated from the functional code.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de