[LLVMdev] Proposal for better assertions in LLVM

[Talin]

On Thu, Jul 28, 2011 at 1:29 PM, Chris Lattner <clattner at apple.com> wrote:

> On Jul 28, 2011, at 12:07 PM, Talin wrote:
>
>  Because the stream is a raw_ostream, LLVM types and values can easily be
>> printed to the stream without having to convert them to string form.
>>
>>
>> I'm unconvinced that this is worth it at all.  This is only going to allow
>> you to "avoid going into the debugger" in the most trivial cases.
>>
>> Question - are you opposed to having a general "assertion with streamed
> arguments" facility in llvm/Support at all, or are you merely opposed to the
> work involved in replacing the existing assertions en-masse? If it's the
> latter, I'll make you a deal - every time I get an assert that I don't think
> gives me enough information, I'll send a patch to improve it. But that can
> only happen if the general mechanism is in place first. And I'd use that
> general mechanism in my own code regardless of whether it's used in LLVM or
> not.
>
>
> First, I don't see a problem here.  "assert" is a standard C feature, and I
> consider it to be good enough.  "Good enough" is defined as being a
> debugging aid for trapping and enforcing preconditions that can be disabled
> in a production build of the code.
>
> I don't like the suggestions proposed for a few reasons:
>
> 1. Introducing weird macros for assertion checking is another barrier to
> learning the code, therefore they should either be really obvious or provide
> significant-enough value to make them worth the barrier.
>
> 2. I don't see the goal of assertions to make it so you don't have to debug
> problems in a debugger.  If that's the value of any change here, then I
> don't see it being worth the cost.
>
> 3. I don't want to bloat production builds with raw ostream stuff.  This
> can be solved depending on how the macro is designed, I'm just sayin'. :)
>
> Custom assertion macros are nothing new, there is a reason LLVM hasn't used
> them until now.
>

Understood. Here's my final word on the matter: From the perspective of a
user of LLVM's APIs, assertions are the primary feedback mechanism that tell
me whether I am using those APIs correctly. In the time I've been using
LLVM, I've made hundreds if not thousands of errors - from various causes
ranging from simple typos to of misunderstanding the documentation. (As part
of migrating my frontend to the new type system, I've encountered about a
dozen assertion failures, most of which were quite easy to diagnose once I
knew what type was involved.) Most of the time an assertion failure is the
first signal that I've done something wrong. Unfortunately, "something went
wrong" is about all the information I typically get from an assertion
failure.


> -Chris
>



-- 
-- Talin
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