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

From: David Daney
Date: Mon Mar 19 2012 - 14:48:15 EST


On 03/18/2012 09:39 PM, Ted Ts'o wrote:
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.


If you want to unconditionally define DEBUG for all of ext4, that is fine with me.

I was just noting that it seemed a little odd to me, and different from what is done elsewhere.

Thanks,
David Daney
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