On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 11:01 AM, Julian Foad <julianf...@btopenworld.com> wrote: > Bert Huijben wrote: > >> you could just use >> assert(svn_relpath_is_canonical(base_relpath)); for a debug only check. (or >> SVN_ERR_ASSERT() if you also want to slow down release versions) > > The policy is: always use 'SVN_ERR_ASSERT' rather than 'assert' (in functions > that return svn_error_t). > > Of course he doesn't "want to slow down" Subversion. > > The choice between 'assert' and 'SVN_ERR_ASSERT' should be based on whether > we want an application program to be able to catch such a failure. We long > ago decided that the answer is YES we do want to write our library functions > in such a way that an application can catch an assertion failure if its > author chooses to do so. SVN_ERR_ASSERT was introduces to fulfil that need. > > There isn't currently an easy build switch (such as NDEBUG) to disable > SVN_ERR_ASSERT completely at compile time. That's just a side issue. If you > want such a switch, just ask; we can easily create one. Or if you think we > need two levels of assertions -- one for quick tests and another for slow > tests -- and want to be able to compile-out the slow ones independently of > the quick ones, just ask. But implying we should use 'assert' for slow tests > and 'SVN_ERR_ASSERT' for quick tests is the Wrong Way.
For what it's worth, I often just define SVN_ERR_ASSERT() to assert() so as to make running through the debugger a bit easier. I think Bert's main argument was that our "heavy" (so-called) assertion system is in place during release and production builds, which could have negative performance implications in those systems. It isn't a question of how fasts the tests run, but how fast our final product runs. -Hyrum -- uberSVN: Apache Subversion Made Easy http://www.uberSVN.com/
