xexyl/dbg

debug, warning and error reporting facility

TL;DR Try dbg

TL;DR Compile and test dbg

make clobber all test

TL;DR Install dbg

sudo make install

dbg - info, debug, warning, error and usage message facility

When linked into your program, the dbg facility provides a way to write informative messages, debug messages, warning messages, fatal (and non-fatal) error messages and usage messages to a stream such as stderr, an open file or a buffer of a fixed size.

The dbg facility consists of function calls with argument checking, as well as attempting to do reasonable things when given NULL pointers, bogus values, or when stderr is NULL.

For modern compilers, dbg facility function calls that use a printf-like format strings are checked for format / parameter mismatches. A type mismatch between a format string and types of arguments will result in a compiler warning message.

The dbg facility function calls are easy to add to your C code. There are several ways to control them including the ability to silence message types, and in the case of debug messages, turn on increasing levels of verbosity.

Set up

1. Compile dbg.c to produce dbg.o.
2. Add #include "dbg.h" to the C source files that you wish to use one or more of the dbg functions in.
3. Set verbosity_level to some verbosity level such as DBG_LOW (1) or DBG_MED (3) (see dbg.h for other levels).
4. Compile your source file(s) and link in dbg.o.

For more information including an example see the next section.

The dbg API

For an overview of all the functions, how to control output, general notes and other information, please see the man pages. You can render them like:

man ./man/man3/dbg.3
man ./man/man3/msg.3
man ./man/man3/printf_usage.3
man ./man/man3/warn.3
man ./man/man3/werr.3
man ./man/man3/err.3
man ./man/man3/warn_or_err.3

An example program making use of some of the functions is dbg_example.c. In the man page dbg.3 it shows you how to compile it and it tells you the expected output as well as why that output is expected.