[m-dev.] logging proposal

[Ian MacLarty]

On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 12:19:36PM +0100, Peter Ross wrote:
> On Mon, Feb 27, 2006 at 09:31:16PM +1100, Ian MacLarty wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > As a result of the recent discussion about how to trick Mercury into not
> > optimising away logging calls, I am proposing the following simple
> > solution:
> > 
> > We add a special procedure `log' to the builtin module.  The new
> > procedure takes a string as input (or possibly an I/O closure).  The
> > compiler is then modified to treat calls to log as being the same as
> > true, unless an "--enable-logging" options is given.  If this option is
> > given then the logging predicates write their output somewhere (where
> > they write their output could be given by another mmc option).
> > 
> > What are the feelings on introducing such a scheme?  Clearly some kind
> > of logging feature is necessary, especially for very long running
> > programs that would be too slow in debugging grades. Also it would be
> > better that user's could add a logging mechanism to their code without
> > tricking and/or lying to the compiler.
> > 
> > We could also have different levels of logging.
> > 
> Why don't we just use the log4m module that I posted to the list quite
> awhile ago, it has the advantage of being extremely flexible, and with
> a bit of work I think one could make the determination of whether to log
> or not much more efficient.
> 

Because there you either have to use impure code (and if you don't want
the impurity to propogate up you have lie to the compiler), or you have
to pass the I/O state, which means you can't do logging of nondet code,
or you have to use the unsafe version which may or may not get optimized away.

Ian.
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