debugging - android.util.Log when publishing - what can I do / not do

Question

I've got a hell of a lot of Log.i Log.d Log.e in my code for a recent app I've done. I'm about to publish this app and I don't really want people seeing it when they plug there phone into adb, but I do want it there for my own debugging.

I was wanting to extend android.util.log and just have a boolean switch in there so I could just turn off the log when I publish and turn it on when developing but this class is final, am I missing a trick?

I don't really want to go through my code an remove all, true if worst comes to worst I could do a ctrl+h global replace Log for //Log but that does suck as an answer.

I also realise that Log.d is stripped out at runtime but it is still ran (losing a little performance) so not running this would be an added bonus.

Yeah so basically I'm looking for a way to toggle my debug on and off programatically, this can also allow me later on to make it a preference or something if people want to view it or help out and send it on.

What do you guys implement for this?

Thanks

Answer 1

As Octavian points out inserting a logging constant would be the best way to do this. Writing a new class for this that calls the original logging methods if debugging is enabled is not a good idea.

Good practice:

if (C.D) { Log.d(C.T, "your log text here " + foo + bar); }

Bad practice:

YourLog.d("your log text here " + foo + bar);

// and in YourLog.java's d() method:
... { if (debugging) Log.d(tag, text); }

The first solution is very fast if the constant D of class C is false. If you have complex string operations for creating your logging string they will not be executed if debugging is deactivated. The compiler can even remove these operations at compile time if D is false, which may result in zero runtime overhead. The second (bad) solution will always build the whole string and call a method, which is overhead you don't need.

In general the first solution would be best. And yes, I really call the class and members C, D and T (Constants/Debugging/Tag) - for performance reasons during typing. ;-)