[Gluster-devel] Query regarding GF_ASSERT macro

[Harshavardhana]

On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 1:03 AM, Xavier Hernandez <xhernandez at datalab.es> wrote:
>
> El 03/01/14 07:02, Harshavardhana ha escrit:
>

>> But from what i gather GF_ASSERT in GlusterFS context is much like
>> BUG_ON for Linux kernel - assert is only necessary during debugging -
>> a backtrace is valid in case of a crash for production where we get
>> something called gluster dump synonymous with 'Kernel dump'
>
> Probably it's only a matter of semantics, but I think that an assert should
> be something that must be true under any circumstance. Even more, many times
> the program will crash soon if an assert fails and it's not handled (i.e.
> program aborted). If the program does not crash, something may get corrupted
> which is worse. If some condition can be false under some rare circumstances
> or it's possible to recover from a failed test, it would be better to use
> GF_VALIDATE_xxx macros.
>
> I agree that on production builds, where (most) bugs have been killed, these
> macros could be a NOOP for performance reasons, however GF_ASSERT() checks
> the condition even in production builds. For this reason I think it would be
> better to force the program to abort even in production, or the macro be
> completely converted to a NOOP.
>
>

There were similar discussions in the past there wasn't any clear
understanding of what
should be done here. I guess GF_ASSERT should be replaced with  GF_VALIDATE_xxx
macros perhaps for all functions which need input validation (or which
function doesn't? :-))

GF_ASSERT is used extensively everywhere and there are many apparent
NULL deferences down
the line after such a check.

Agree with GF_ASSERT being completely NOOP if going by the books, it
might just improve run-time
performance :-)