Is it acceptable to not parse unittest blocks when unittests are disabled ?

[XavierAP via Digitalmars-d]

On Thursday, 30 March 2017 at 09:04:28 UTC, ixid wrote:
> On Thursday, 30 March 2017 at 06:53:47 UTC, XavierAP wrote:
>>
>> I would consider this harmful... The spec already states this 
>> about unit tests, so I'd guess the decision was taken in the 
>> past conscientiously.
>>
>> If you're worried about compilation time, you can always 
>> define your unit tests in separate files that are included for 
>> compilation only when needed.
>
> Why is it harmful (actually asking, not telling you you're 
> wrong)? I thought we were going to use a pay for what you use 
> philosophy, if a unit test is not run then why is it paid for?

rjframe and Stefan have said it better than I could. I do 
understand the more I think about it how people could be worried 
about the downsides. Priorities depends on user cases and some 
personal inclination. But with the stated arguments I would think 
it's a bit of a slippery slope. And moreover for people so 
concerned with compilation time there are easy clean workarounds 
such as separate files. Compilers could implement something 
analogous to pre-compiled headers for this case.