NoBug provides GLARING! assertions and annotations for rust code. These have different semantic than the stdlib assertions. The Idea behind NoBug is to have active annotations with semantic meaning.

Assertions

Normal builds of a programm will std::process::abort() when the asserted condition fails. Only in tests they will panic because the test harness running tests in threads and catching panics.

Aside from a generic (and discouraged) [ASSERT!] macro we provide:

[REQUIRE!] -- checking preconditions
[ENSURE!] -- checking postconditions

Each of those has a correspondending ASSERT_DBG!, REQUIRE_DBG! and ENSURE_DBG! variants that inserts checks only in debug builds.

Since some programs must not abort on assertion failure we provide a abort_on_failure feature. When this is not enabled then any DIE! and any other macro calling it will cause a compile error in release, non-test builds. One can only use the *_DBG! variants of the nobug macros then.

Annotations

NoBug defines macros to actively annotate code. Actively means that these macros can do different things in release or debug builds, depending on configuration:

Be a [compile_error!()]
When certain things must be resolved before software is released and deployed.
Abort the program with a message
When a code path can't make progress because of unfinished code.
Log a message each time the macro is encountered
Just to nag the programmer
Log a message once when the macro is encountered for the first time
Less nagging
Do Nothing

We provide following annotation macros (with the noted defaults):

[FIXME!] -- Bug that must be fixed.
[FIXED!] -- Annotate fixed bugs.
[TODO!] -- Incomplete but required code.
[WIP!] -- Work in progress.
[IDEA!] -- Not required improvement of existing code.
[PLANNED!] -- Potential future planned feature.

Tool Macros

The above uses some tool macros which may be useful on their own in some cases.

[MESSAGE!] -- Print a message to the user.
[DIE!] -- Abort (or panic). compile_error!() when abort_on_fail is not enabled.

Feature Flags

abort_on_fail
This is enabled by default. When not enabled then [DIE!] and all macros using it will cause a compile error in release/non-test builds. This is useful when you want to make sure that nobug will never abort in release builds. One can only use the *_DBG! variants of the nobug macros in release builds then.

History

In 2006 I started a C Debug library of the same name (https://git.pipapo.org/cehteh/nobug). This implementation will carry some of its ideas over to rust.

Roadmap

Currently we only implemented most basic functionally. In future more features will be added.

Eventually some of the macros will become proc macros
Support for invariants on objects (needs proc macros)

With proc macros we can have some nicer syntax:

#[nobug]
fn example(i: i32 where i > 0) -> i32
where
  result < 100
{
  ...
}