How do you avoid leaving debugger print/pdb statements in python open source apps when you're debugging them and just finish?

Question

Sometimes when developing using open source software, you need to read it's source code (specially zope/plone). A lot of times I need to write print statements, or debug calls (import pdb), or comment try/except clauses, you name it.

Sometimes I have a lot of files opened when trying to find an issue, and sometimes I forget to remove these print/debug alterations.

So, my question is: how do you keep yourself organized when doing it? Do you write "TODOs" along the modifications and search for them later, do you keep everything opened in your editor and when you find what you were looking for you just revert the files (This approach isn't useful when you're searching for a really big problem that needs days, you need to turn off your computer and return the other day)? Or you just don't do nothing since print statements in development environment is nothing to worry about?

I'm using Vim. I'm just interested to know how other programmers treat this issue.

Answer 1

I used to run into that problem a lot. Now, as part of my check-in process, I run a find/grep script combo that looks for my debugging statements. The only caveat is that I must keep my added debugging statements consistent so grep can find them all.

something like this:

## pre-checkin_scan.bin
find . -name "*.py" -exec grep -H --file=/homes/js/bin/pre-checkin_scan_regexp_list.grep {} \;



## pre-checkin_scan_regexp_list.grep
## (The first pattern is to ignore Doxygen comments)

^##[^@]
pdb
^ *print *( *" *Dbg
^ *print *( *" *Debug
^ *debug

Answer 2

In case of my own projects, the source code is always in version control. Before committing, I always check the graphical diff so that I can see what has changed, what the commit message should be and whether I can split up into smaller commits. That way, I almost always recognize temporary garbage like print statements. If not, I usually notice it shortly afterwards and can do an uncommit if I haven't yet pushed (works for DVCS like git and bzr, not with subversion).

Concerning problems that take multiple days, it's just the same thing. I don't commit until the problem is solved and then look at the diff again.

A text editor that allows editing within the graphical diff view would be really helpful in these cases, but I'm mostly using Eclipse, which doesn't support that.