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Re: libsvn_repos logging -- design problems

From: Brian Holmes <svndev_at_gmail.com>
Date: 2005-07-20 05:08:47 CEST

On 7/15/05, Greg Hudson <ghudson@mit.edu> wrote:
>
> On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 01:34 +0200, Branko Čibej wrote:
> > #define SVN_REPOS_WRITE_ERRORLOG(repo, level, process, message, pool) \
> > while { \
> > svn_repos_loglevel_t loglevel; \
> > SVN_ERR (svn_repos_get_loglevel (&loglevel, (repo), (pool))); \
> > if ((level) <= loglevel) \
> > SVN_ERR (svn_repos_write_errorlog ((repo), (level), (process), \
> > (message), (pool))); \
> > } while (0)
>
> Sorry if I missed this before.
>
> Well, we're back to my distaste for non-trivial macros.

Perhaps more convincingly, if the write_errorlog() function takes a
> variable argument list as I suggested, we can't wrap that in a macro
> without C99 tricks or an extra set of parentheses (and even that trick
> won't work right, since we need to get at one of the arguments).

I'm in agreement with Brane on the macros. Personally I have no qualms with
macros if they are used carefully. I think in this case, what macros buy us
far outweighs their evils.

First of all, lets clean up this macro with the most recent changes:

#define svn_repos_write_errorlog(repos, log_level, message) \
do { \
if ((repos)->error_log->level <= log_level) \
svn_log_write((repos)->error_log, log_level, message) \
} while(0);

The value of the macro here is huge. The macro allows us to:
* enforce a constant method of logging that checks the log level before
calling the function
* prevents us from processing the 'message' parameter when unnecessary.
* makes our code much more readable.
* makes logging simple from a programmer perspective while keeping things
efficient.
* we can easily make changes to logic by changing the macro (like checking
if repos or repos->error_log is null before calling the function) or we
could completely (and possibly selectively) remove the logging code
altogether.

Logging is one place where I believe macros perform beautifully.

I'm not sure what to say about the var args. It is true that using a macro
will not allow us to use var args cleanly. However, do we really need to use
varargs and does it outweight my purported benefits?

- Brian Holmes

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Received on Wed Jul 20 23:06:39 2005

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