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Conditional compilation
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<h2 id="criticism">Criticism</h2> <p>When conditional compilation depends on too many variables, it can make the code harder to reason about as the number of possible combinations of configuration increases exponentially.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> When conditional compilation is done via a <a href="/facts/Preprocessor/arTRL5RG">preprocessor</a> that does not guarantee syntactically correct output in the source language, such as the <a href="/facts/C_preprocessor/KuhuxKYP">C preprocessor</a>, this may lead to hard-to-debug compilation errors,<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:7" href="#fn:7"><sup>7</sup></a> which is sometimes called "#ifdef hell."<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:8" href="#fn:8"><sup>8</sup></a><a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:9" href="#fn:9"><sup>9</sup></a> </p> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>"Conditional Compilation". Microsoft Corporation. Archived from the original on 2008-09-06. Retrieved 2011-11-27. <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20080906144358/http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ahx1z4fs(VS.80).aspx" target="_blank">https://web.archive.org/web/20080906144358/http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ahx1z4fs(VS.80).aspx</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Gazzillo, Paul; Wei, Shiyi (2019-05-27). "Conditional Compilation is Dead, Long Live Conditional Compilation!" (PDF). ICSE-NIER '19: Proceedings of the 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Results. 2019 IEEE/ACM 41st International Conference on Software Engineering: New Ideas and Emerging Results (ICSE-NIER). Montreal, QC, Canada: IEEE Press. pp. 105–108. doi:10.1109/ICSE-NIER.2019.00035. ISBN 978-1-7281-1758-4. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-11-07. Retrieved 2023-01-21. <a href="978-1-7281-1758-4" target="_blank">978-1-7281-1758-4</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>Meinicke, Jens; Thüm, Thomas; Schröter, Reimar; Benduhn, Fabian; Leich, Thomas; Saake, Gunter (2017). Meinicke, Jens; Thüm, Thomas; Schröter, Reimar; Benduhn, Fabian (eds.). Quality Assurance for Conditional Compilation. Cham: Springer International Publishing. pp. 131–139. doi:10.1007/978-3-319-61443-4_12. ISBN 978-3-319-61443-4. Retrieved 2023-01-21. {{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help) <a href="978-3-319-61443-4" target="_blank">978-3-319-61443-4</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>"compiler - How does conditional compilation impact product quality, security and code complexity?". Software Engineering Stack Exchange. Retrieved 2023-01-21. <a href="https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/405980/how-does-conditional-compilation-impact-product-quality-security-and-code-compl" target="_blank">https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/405980/how-does-conditional-compilation-impact-product-quality-security-and-code-compl</a> <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>Le, Duc; Walkingshaw, Eric; Erwig, Martin (2011-09-18). "#ifdef confirmed harmful: Promoting understandable software variation". 2011 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing (VL/HCC). pp. 143–150. doi:10.1109/VLHCC.2011.6070391. ISBN 978-1-4577-1246-3. <a href="978-1-4577-1246-3" target="_blank">978-1-4577-1246-3</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>"conditional compilation - Why should #ifdef be avoided in .c files?". Stack Overflow. Retrieved 2023-01-21. <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1851181/why-should-ifdef-be-avoided-in-c-files" target="_blank">https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1851181/why-should-ifdef-be-avoided-in-c-files</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:7"><p>"c++ - Dos and Don'ts of Conditional Compile". Stack Overflow. Retrieved 2023-01-21. <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4469645/dos-and-donts-of-conditional-compile" target="_blank">https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4469645/dos-and-donts-of-conditional-compile</a> <a href="#fnref:7" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:8"><p>Preschern, Christopher (2019-07-03). Patterns to escape the #ifdef hell (PDF). Proceedings of the 24th European Conference on Pattern Languages of Programs. EuroPLop '19. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery. pp. 1–12. doi:10.1145/3361149.3361151. ISBN 978-1-4503-6206-1. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2022-12-21. <a href="978-1-4503-6206-1" target="_blank">978-1-4503-6206-1</a> <a href="#fnref:8" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:9"><p>"Living in the #ifdef Hell". www.cqse.eu. 28 October 2015. Archived from the original on 2022-11-28. Retrieved 2023-01-21. <a href="http://www.cqse.eu/en/news/blog/living-in-the-ifdef-hell/" target="_blank">http://www.cqse.eu/en/news/blog/living-in-the-ifdef-hell/</a> <a href="#fnref:9" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>