CL-DEBUG

A cross-package debug facility for Common Lisp.

This is a tiny but powerful package that provides a unified way to enable or disable debug-specific code. Debugging code can be enabled or disabled relative to program features denoted by either a symbol or a keyword.

This approach is to be contrasted with the notion of log levels which can lack in granularity, often giving too few information or too much. Selecting debug code by features improves the debugging experience and greatly speeds up the identification of many bugs.

The interface is very similar to that of *FEATURES* with the difference that it is not a reader macro. Source code is only 23 lines of code, the only exported symbol is DEBUG-P and using it is pretty straightforward.

Usage

For instance consider this source code taken from the database handling code of a popular data driven website :

(when (debug-p :database)
  ;; Log some database infos
  ...)

And in the model handling code :

(when (debug-p (or :database :model))
        ;;  Log some model info
        ...)

Then in your REPL or by creating some user interface knob, your developers or users can activate this specific debugging code, without invoking a logging hell across all your programs :

(setf (debug-p :database) t)

So if your code is spanned across multiple packages - for instance in this example database and model are not in the same package - you can still enable or disable all the debugging code related to the precise features you are currently working on.

Licensing

The code is released under the ISC license meaning that it can be used everywhere you might want to.

CL-DEBUG

Copyright 2013 LowH <code@lowh.net>

Permission to use, copy, modify, and distribute this software for any
purpose with or without fee is hereby granted, provided that the above
copyright notice and this permission notice appear in all copies.

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WITH REGARD TO THIS SOFTWARE INCLUDING ALL IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR
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WHATSOEVER RESULTING FROM LOSS OF USE, DATA OR PROFITS, WHETHER IN AN
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OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE USE OR PERFORMANCE OF THIS SOFTWARE.