Re: [PATCH 1/9] ext4: Add -DDEBUG to Makefile

[Ted Ts'o]

On Fri, Mar 16, 2012 at 09:03:57AM -0700, David Daney wrote:
> 
> In many other susbsystems/drivers, the definition of DEBUG is gated
> by a separate Kconfig symbol used to select debugging just for that
> susbsystem/driver (see CONFIG_MMC_DEBUG for example).

In ext4 we have many different debugging patches, and in general you'd
never want to enable them all at once (you'd get way too much noise).
The debugging statements are there when a developer is debugging very
specific section of code (i.e., the directory index, or the extent
tree, or the block allocator, etc.).  It's really only ext4 developers
who need to use those debugging statements, and even for them it's
quite rare.

So I've never considered it worthwhile to enable them via a CONFIG_*
menu item; developers who are debugging a specific problem will
generally just drop in the specific #define on an ad hoc basis, and
that works fine.

					- Ted
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