[Python-Dev] Re: PEP 282 comments

[Tim Peters]

[Aahz]
> Hrm.  Based on previous comments, particularly from the Timbot, I'm
> wondering whether the linkage between !debugging and optimizing is too
> tight in Python,

It is, and they're not the same thing in reality.

> and whether constructs like this should be deprecated.

In favor of what?  It (__debug__) serves a useful purpose now; that's why
it's being used, after all.

> Seems to me that there will definitely be times you want debugging
> output when you're running -O.

As was lamented recently on c.l.py, it's also the case that when developing
a large system, you often want to enable asserts only in a small subset of
the newer modules.  People used to approximate that by setting __debug__
explicitly to 0 or 1 on a per-module basis, but that's been deprecated (to
the point of extinction, although Martin will point out that you can still
fool the compiler by setting __debug__ indirectly via the module dict).

I doubt there are any easy answers here.  But please don't let that stop you
from just solving it <wink>.