stack tracing {was assert(condition[, message]) patch}

[kris]

James Dunne wrote:
> I'm sorry but I really have to insert my skepticism here about stack 
> traces.
> 
> Upon first glance it sounds like a wonderful idea, until you get to 
> where Java is at.  Literally hundreds of lines of stack traces dumped 
> into log files to wade thru, most of them completely useless because: 
> THEY DON'T CONTAIN STATE!!!
> 
> Sure they have the call-stack state so you can see where the function 
> calls came from but there are no local variables, no function parameter 
> values, no class/struct dumps; basically nothing useful for anything 
> more complex than the simplest case of a deterministic function call, 
> and even then it's not too terribly useful.
> 
> While I agree that it is better than nothing, we can still do better. An 
> entire run-time debugging framework is what we really want to shoot 
> for.  Exception logging, tracing, dumping of object contents, reading 
> local variables, reading function parameters, etc.  This probably 
> requires the help of a compile-time reflection system (where certain 
> properties of objects are translated by the compiler into literal 
> expressions).  Run-time reflection isn't really necessary.


Fair enough;

I find it vaguely interesting that there's been a log4j clone publicly 
available for 25 months now, yet I'm perhaps the only one who uses it -- 
lol -- what does that tell you? If anything?

:-D