Name: clC74495 Date: 08/10/98


Conditional compiler options generally tend to
be used in other language for platform specific
features/code to be compiled in. This does
go against the spirit of Java with its platform
independence, however it would be nice to be
able to cleanly add in debugging code when developing
and then compile it out completely for distribution.
It would be so convenient because occasionally
debugging code stays in a release by accident because
you loose track of it. If you could add it in
and compile it out later then this would never happen
provided you marked the code as debugging in some
clean way.

e.g. in the syntax perhaps something like the follow
a special debug keyword which encloses a block
of debugging code.

debug {
   //debugging code...
}

when you run javac perhaps you set a switch like
-d to compile debug code into outputted class
files.

this would prevent any misuse of a more general
#ifdef style compile option.

what do you think ?
(Review ID: 36710)
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