[cfe-dev] Decl::dumpXML and -DNDEBUG

[Alexander Kornienko]

Hi all,

I've recently implemented a tool named clang-ast-dump, which allows to dump
selectively an AST of user-specified translation units. It's a really
simple tool now, most of it's code is node filtering. The rest is done by
Decl::dumpXML.

Now the problem: Decl::dumpXML does nothing when compiled with -DNDEBUG. I
assume that initially this method was meant to be only helpful during
debugging of clang code, but now there are a couple of reasons to review
this decision, I think:
  * clang -cc1 mode has a command line option "-ast-dump-xml", which uses
dumpXML, and currently it won't work with -DNDEBUG (e.g. when builing with
CMake: Release configuration + LLVM_ASSERTIONS_ENABLED=OFF);
  * clang-ast-dump tool uses it.

A comment in *DumpXML.cpp* states:
// Only pay for this in code size in assertions-enabled builds.

But having -ast-dump-xml option conflicts with this idea: either we have to
disable this option completely in non-assertion-enabled builds, or we have
to drop this idea of not-having the dumpXML implementation in them. The
third option would be to drop the -ast-dump-xml option completely and
instead use clang-ast-dump tool when needed. In this case we could only use
an implementation of Decl::dumpXML in the tool and exclude it from clang
binary.

-- 
Regards,
Alexander Kornienko
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