[Dev] Propose getting rid of developer release

[John Anderson]

Alec Flett wrote:

> John Anderson wrote:
>
>> -1
>> What's the point of using asserts in code if nobody ever uses them? 
>> If we do this we might as well rip all the asserts out of all our code.
>
> I'm not sure I understand this - I do a "make install build" and my 
> [python] asserts always get caught. I think C++ asserts are useless 
> for everyone except people actually doing wx development.

Perhaps the reason you think C++ asserts are useless is because you've 
almost never run with them.

I find the C++ asserts quite useful. In fact, using them over the 
weekend I discovered a crashing bug that I wouldn't have noticed without 
them: edit a field in the summary or sidebar and quit causes a crash. I 
suspect this bug has been around for a very long time.

The asserts in wx have caught a bunch of things I wouldn't have 
otherwise seen, e.g. accessing deleted memory. I often notice these bug 
even when I'm not doing wx development.

The idea I was trying to make by my comment is that if nobody ever runs 
codes with asserts, what's the point of having them? For my development 
on windows and linux, spending part of my time running the debug builds 
has really been worth it in terms of finding bugs. I suspect this works 
for me and not you might be because I have a faster computer.

>
> Am I missing something? Is there perhaps a mode that the python 
> interpreter runs in that bypasses asserts? if so, we should /not /be 
> bypassing asserts except in actual releases (i.e. 0.7 itself)

Running python with the -O option (optimize) ignores python asserts. The 
release launchers run -O and ignore asserts. The debug launchers run 
without -O and pop up everything that goes to stdout to a dialog so it 
isn't missed by people who don't run in a shell. You can get python 
asserts if you run Chandler without -O in the release version -- which 
is how I normally run.

>
> Alec
>
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