Sreedhar Chintalapaty

Conditional compilation is not available in Java - and Java's platform independence is the cited (and largely justified) reason. Nevertheless, one valuable use of conditional compilation, which is to cleanly insert debug code into applications, is thereby lost. Several methods to work around this disadvantage are available. Joe Chou details these approaches in previous issues of Java Developer's Journal (see www.sys-con.com/java/archives/0312/chou/index_b.html). In this article I propose an approach that's arguably simpler, more scalable, and more flexible than any existing method. Although it can potentially be used for full-fledged conditional compilation, we'll limit ourselves to the problem of clean debug code. Problem Statement Diagnostic messages: Designed to remain in the code even after release. These are what an as-released application writes out into its lo... (more)