Best approach to switch debug on/off

Question

My scenario is the following: I have a remote service with which any application can communicate through Messenger. Applications send custom events I defined. Each event define an "action" to be performed (similar to Android's Intent). To test the event sending and processing by the service, I want to set up a new event action (e.g. EventAction.DEBUG), but I don't want this action and the code that processes it to be present in the release, .

This is what I thought:

• Use a final static boolean variable to conditionally execute code. I don't like this because of hardcoded variable.
• Read the debug state from a configuration file. This is slow and also compiler will generate the code to process the debugs, so useless comparing will ensue.
• Pass the debug flag to the application at startup. I ignore how to do this in Android, or even if this is possible. Also I think this will also make the compiler generate the debug code.

What do you think is the best approach to implement this behavior?

Answer 1

Android's ADT version 17 and higher already include a BuildConfig.DEBUG variable which is set to false when exporting a signed APK (for release).

Answer 2

A final static. ProGuard will remove the unused code.

Regarding a config file value--it's only "useless" if it can never ever change during runtime, and a compare isn't all that slow, really, when compared to the rest of the app.