Question

I have an application that uses a lot of Log.d() or Log.e() calls for debugging. Now I want to create my final package for release. The Android Export feature from Eclipse mentions to remove the "Debuggable" flag in the manifest, which I have done. Should I also comment all the Log calls to improve the performance of my application or these calls will do nothing in the non debuggable final version package ?

Answer 1

I have subclassed the Log class to a class called Trace, which mirrors methods on Log. So I do Trace.d(TAG,”blah”) and then within the Trace.d method the code only executes based on a static final class variable called LOGGING_LEVEL, which has levels 1-5 (none, errors only, errors & warnings, errors & warnings & info, and everything including debug) . When producing a production APK, Proguard removes all the code that isn’t used in the application, so it does it for me.

For me, logging is far too important to remove from the source, but it must be removed from the production application, for performance, secure and intellectual property reasons.

This structure allows me to add a lot MORE logging to the application, which makes debugging problems much easier, but with no impact whatsoever on the production APK

public class Trace
{
    public static final int    NONE                         = 0;
    public static final int    ERRORS_ONLY                  = 1;
    public static final int    ERRORS_WARNINGS              = 2;
    public static final int    ERRORS_WARNINGS_INFO         = 3;
    public static final int    ERRORS_WARNINGS_INFO_DEBUG   = 4;

    private static final int          LOGGING_LEVEL   = ERRORS_ONLY;        // Errors + warnings + info + debug (default)

    public static void e(String tag, String msg)
    {
        if ( LOGGING_LEVEL >=1) Log.e(tag,msg);
    }

    public static void e(String tag, String msg, Exception e)
    {
        if ( LOGGING_LEVEL >=1) Log.e(tag,msg,e);
    }

    public static void w(String tag, String msg)
    {
        if ( LOGGING_LEVEL >=2) Log.w(tag, msg);
    }

    public static void i(String tag, String msg)
    {
        if ( LOGGING_LEVEL >=3) Log.i(tag,msg);
    }

    public static void d(String tag, String msg)
    {
        if ( LOGGING_LEVEL >=4) Log.d(tag, msg);
    }

}