RE: proposal for ICU tracing

Sounds great.

> Yes, some configuration option to compile out the tracing stuff is 
> planned.  But, by default, the tracing code will be present 
> in release 
> builds.  The overhead is a single if(boolean_variable) test 
> at the entry 
>   and exit of traced functions, not too bad.

Plus, it could be coded as:

#ifdef USE_TRACING
static const bool use_tracing = true;
#else
static const bool use_tracing = false;
#endif
// ...
if (use_tracing) {
// ...
}

That way the compiler will always do at least a syntax check on the code in the branch, even if tracing is turned off. And since 'if (use_tracing)' is constant, all compilers will strip the branch out, yielding no overhead, if it results in 'false'.

Bob