Its usually very difficult to debug a software with large amount of code. People generally writelogs, write traces while debugging code and often forget to remove these .this will result in undesirable messages in production code.
A bad way of instrumenting code is shown below
static void calleeFunc()
{
try
{
Trace.WriteLine("in callee func");
Console.WriteLine("in callee func");
int i = 1;
int j = 0;
int k = i / j;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw ;
}
The problem with this snippet is that it displays unnecessary messages when compiled in Release mode.This can also lead to security vulnerabilities
A way to solve the problem is the use of conditional compilation directives provided by c# compiler.
The #if DEBUG end if block enables the trace message and console messages in debug mode and strips it of in release mode
static void calleeFunc()
{
try
{
#if DEBUG
Trace.WriteLine("in callee func");
Console.WriteLine("in callee func");
#endif
int i = 1;
int j = 0;
int k = i / j;
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
throw ;
}
}
The use of the #if debug #endif block helps eliminate unnecessary debug messages in production(Release Mode code) This way you can stop spending large amount of time in removing code used for understanding or tracing.
