(C#) Determining whether the current build mode is Debug or Release

Often when debugging, it's good to do things like output extra information, etc. which you want to skip when the application is compiled in release mode.

The most obvious example is logging, which is more detailed in debugging, and should output as little as possible when released live.

Here's how the ModeDetector class works:

if (new ModeDetector().IsDebug)
  PerformDebugLogging(message);
// else
// skip it because the application is compiled in Release mode and we want to optimize performance

Here's the ModeDetector class:

using System;

namespace SoftwareMonkeys.SiteStarter.Diagnostics
{
        /// <summary>
        /// Used to detect the current build mode.
        /// </summary>
        public class ModeDetector
        {
                /// <summary>
                /// Gets a value indicating whether the assembly was built in debug mode.
                /// </summary>
                public virtual bool IsDebug
                {
                        get {
                                bool isDebug = false;

                                #if (DEBUG)
                                isDebug = true;
                                #else
                                isDebug = false;
                                #endif
                                
                                return isDebug;
                        }
                }
                
                /// <summary>
                /// Gets a value indicating whether the assembly was built in release mode.
                /// </summary>
                public bool IsRelease
                {
                        get { return !IsDebug; }
                }
        }
}

http://code.google.com/p/sitestarter/source/browse/trunk/Src/App/SoftwareMonkeys.SiteStarter.Diagnostics/ModeDetector.cs[^]


One reason for using this ModeDetector class is so that a mock version can be used during testing. Here's an example of the mock version:
http://code.google.com/p/sitestarter/source/browse/trunk/Src/App/SoftwareMonkeys.SiteStarter.Diagnostics.Tests/MockModeDetector.cs[^]

Instead of having to recompile in debug mode just to test the debug logging, the MockModeDetector can be used to simulate debug mode regardless of the actual compilation mode.