[Koha-devel] A solution to add debugger functionality most koha *.pl scripts, thoughts please?

[Mason James]

Hi Koha developers,

I have been talking with John and Paul at BibLibre for some months  
now about a
correct way to add Data::Dumper, Smart::Comments,  
insert::your::favorite::debugger stuff
to the Koha perl files *once and for all*


After a few false starts and some googling - this is the method I  
have used and tested...


use C4::Debug;
use if $debug, 'Data::Dumper' ;
use if $debug, 'Smart::Comments' ;
# use if $debug, 'YAML::Dumper;   # etc....

It's short, sweet and works a treat ;)


I currently waste much time every day adding/removing 'use  
Data::Dumper/use Smart::Comments'  from my files when debugging and  
then committing patches to koha.org


Can we agree to add this code (or something similar) to most *.pm and  
*.pl files?

Is there a better way than this?
Is this a bad way?
Any improvements or corrections i don't realize?
What do other developers do to get around this laborious issue?


FYI: this small fix (should it be accepted), will resolve one of my  
biggest pet-annoyances of the Koha project!

Cheers, Mason.