[Gllug] C/C++ mentor

[Nix]

On 27 Nov 2006, Daniel P. Berrange verbalised:
> On Sun, Nov 26, 2006 at 09:09:32PM +0000, Nix wrote:
>> ... except that the docs recommend you *always* build with --enable-checks.
>> Daniel Stone and others have pointed out that this appears to be honoured
>> mostly in the breach...
>
> Which docs recommend it ?

Er um.

I think this must have been an illusion on my part, probably triggered
by the presence of the word `sanity' (my general expectation when I see
that word is `why would you *not* want to include *sanity* checks?', and
obviously I confabulated that into a belief that the docs actually
recommended turning it on.)

Of course the default if not explicitly specified at configure time is
`on' which is itself a de facto recommendation.

>> But if by chance your binding is buggy, oops, SIGABRT and you're dead.
>> A bit tough on the app if sending bus messages isn't its sole reason
>> for existence.
>
> That's why the checks are only supposed to be enabled in developer
> builds, not production builds going into distros. Guess that message 
> hasn't been getting across as clearly as it should have to people 
> packaging up DBus for the distros :-(

You may be right there. I guess it's the configure-time default: if the
d-bus devs think that sanity checks are a good thing to default to on,
then it's generally assumed to be a good idea to leave them that way
unless you've got a damn good reason to do otherwise (like, say, your
program getting SIGABRTed).

Personally I'd expect --enable-asserts to turn on `SIGABRT on failure',
not --enable-checks.

-- 
`The main high-level difference between Emacs and (say) UNIX, Windows,
 or BeOS... is that Emacs boots quicker.' --- PdS
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