[Rock-dev] New feature: vizkit3d debug drawings

[Arne Böckmann]

Hi,
> Friendly piece of advice: don't add debug-only codepaths in your
> components.

I agree. Debug-only codepaths should not be part of any release worthy 
code. However the goal of this library is to help developers understand 
what is going on while debugging/developing new components. It is not 
meant to be part of release code, hence the compile time switch that 
removes all visualization code paths.

In a sense this library is like a logging library. But instead of 
textual output it creates visual output.

> If you need to visualize debug info, build data structures
> that go on a port and visualize that. Which will allow you to do deep
> debugging from log files, and will make sure that debugging codepaths
> does not get in the way when you go headless.
>

That is what we did before. However building data structures for 
temporary stuff that you just want to take a look at while debugging is 
time consuming and cumbersome. Especially in early development phases I 
tend to use small binaries that just test the stuff I am working on. At 
that time there are neither tasks nor ports.

Besides, creating and populating special data structures just for 
debugging creates debug-only code paths as well. In my experience going 
from hand-made debug visualizations to debug drawing macros has reduced 
the debug-only code paths to a bare minimum.

Cheers,

Arne