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February 2009
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2009.02.05 19:13 "Re: assertions, and building with DEBUG/NDEBUG", by Bob Friesenhahn
On Thu, 5 Feb 2009, Frank Warmerdam wrote: > Tavis Ormandy has reported some problems with corrupt tiff files that > trigger assertions() in libtiff. > > http://bugzilla.maptools.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1995 > > It appears these assertions are being used to call to attention problems > in these files for developers, and are intended to be compiled out in > production software. Assertions should only be used to detect logic problems in the libtiff implementation or perhaps the using application. It would be a bug if an assertion is thrown by libtiff (rather than returning a warning or error) based on reading a file. > So my question is, is it normal for people building for production purposes > to build with NDEBUG defined? I have not heard of a build production process for open-source based systems which intentionally disables assertions. More than likely they are disabled in quite a few closed-source applications. > I am contemplating modifying tiffiop.h to explicitly define NDEBUG if > DEBUG is not defined, before including assert.h. This would mean that > assertions are compiled out by default, and only included if DEBUG is > explicitly requested. I would also change Makefile.vc to define DEBUG for > the debug build case. This is a sure-fire way to ensure that there are no bug-reports regarding thrown assertions. Is that really what we want? Maybe we are using the assertions incorrectly. Bob ====================================== Bob Friesenhahn bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/