Objective-C #ifdef DEBUG is TRUE when the app is distributed? - objective-c

Question

In my project, I am sharing events to Firebase Analytics and other analytics platform
When an event occurs I am checking whether the scheme is in debug mode:
#ifdef DEBUG
#define sharedAnalytics NO
#else
#define sharedAnalytics YES
#endif
When debugging in Xcode evetything seems to work as expected:
-When changing the build configuration in scheme to Release, sharedAnalytics is true, and the event is fired,
when changing the build configuration to Debug - sharedAnalytics is false.
But the app in Appstore stopped firing those events somewhere in Jan 2020, both in Firebase Analytics and in AppsFlyer.
In the Android app everything works.
From what I know, when the app is compiled for Appstore (or Testflight) it automatically switches to Release build configuration, but it looks like it's not?
My questions are:
-Do I need to make sure I am in Release mode before uploading an app to Appstore?
-What changed in the beginning of 2020?
Thanks!
EDIT:
This is where I check sharedAnalytics
- (void)logFirebaseEvent:(NSString*)eventName params:(NSDictionary*)params{
if (sharedAnalytics) {
[FIRAnalytics logEventWithName:eventName parameters:params];
}
else {
NSLog(#"%#", sharedAnalytics == nil ? #"sharedAnalytics is nil" : #"sharedAnalytics == NO");
}
}
When in DEBUG prints "sharedAnalytics is nil"
When in RELEASE prints logs the event.

Answer 1

Debug, Release, Appstore is just build configurations.
Xcode by default just create Debug and Release configurations in new projects.
There is two possible ways to define macros:
in code by #define ...
in build settings in GCC_PREPROCESSOR_DEFINITIONS parameter
May be you have copied Appstore from Debug or may be you have #define DEBUG some where
May be you have DEBUG=0
Proper way to check for DEBUG is
#if defined(DEBUG) && DEBUG
#define sharedAnalytics NO
#else
#define sharedAnalytics YES
#endif
May be you also checking sharedAnalytics wrong.
In both cases #ifdef sharedAnalytics gives YES

Answer 2

Ok Vadim, not that this will solve the problem, but when you check this is a bit better
- (void)logFirebaseEvent:(NSString*)eventName params:(NSDictionary*)params{
if (sharedAnalytics) {
[FIRAnalytics logEventWithName:eventName parameters:params];
}
else {
NSLog(#"sharedAnalytics == NO");
}
}
Technically that
sharedAnalytics == nil
evaluates to
sharedAnalytics == NO
which is true and so it reports it as nil.
The problem is this still leaves an NSLog in your production / release code, so maybe you need to do that differently. Again, this is moot relative to your problem, just doing the tests a bit better. Anyway, herewith an idea.
Do the define as follows.
#ifdef DEBUG
#undef sharedAnalytics
#else
#define sharedAnalytics
#endif
To be extremely pure, you should use caps and reduce that to a single branch but lets not go there right now ...
Then when you test do as follows
- (void)logFirebaseEvent:(NSString*)eventName params:(NSDictionary*)params{
#ifdef sharedAnalytics
[FIRAnalytics logEventWithName:eventName parameters:params];
#else
NSLog(#"sharedAnalytics == NO");
#endif
}
While this looks a lot like your original code and does not solve the direct problem you have, it is better since when you compile for DEBUG you get the NSLog bit and when you compile for RELEASE that code is stripped completely from your release version.
What do you get for all this? You should strip all NSLog's from release code as it has performance implications.