Question

I am trying to enhance my Logger class with some conditionals to control what to log and where to log. I’ve got two kinds of logging functions:

public static class Logger
{
    [Conditional("Logging"), Conditional("VerboseLogging")]
    public static void Log(string msg, string filename)
    {
        // log to file
    }

    [Conditional("VerboseLogging")]
    public static void VerboseLog(string msg, string filename)
    {
        Log(msg, filename); // just defer call to Log(string msg)
    }
}

However, running the following program

#define Logging
#define VerboseLogging

static void Main(string[] args)
{
    Logger.Log("Logging", "");
    Logger.VerboseLog("VerboseLogging", "");
}

yields only the output “Logging”, missing “VerboseLogging”.

Debugging the application showed that VerboseLogging indeed does get called, but it does not call Log(msg, filename). The debugger simply jumps right over the function call to the end of the VerboseLog() function.

When I remove the conditionals from the Log(string msg) method, it works.

Does anybody have a clue as to why this happens or what to do so it will be called?

Answer 1

Note that you need to define Logging and VerboseLogging in your Logger
file also, because VerboseLog will not call Log if Logging is not defined there.

To add a project-wide conditional define, right click on your Project, and select Project Properties. Then go to the Build tab and enter “Logging, VerboseLogging” to the “Conditional compilation symbols” text box.