[ODE] Compiling as Release differs from Debug

[Steve Baker]

garry wrote:
> I don't know whether this is down to me being a rubbish programmer or 
> not. But here's the situation.
>  
> When I compile my game in debug mode it works great. But when I compile 
> it in release mode it's really buggy.

This must be MSVC - right?

For some *insane* reason, the developers of MSVC decided that in debug mode,
all variables would be pre-initialised to zero if no otherwise initialised
by the program.  But in released code, this is not the case.

So, uninitialised variable bugs are hard to find in debug mode - but show up
quite well in release mode.  Hence, the debug mode does a really good job of
hiding the very bugs you'd hope it would help you find.  What *were* they
thinking when they did that?

This isn't the only difference in the way code is compiled between debug and
release modes - there are many others.

Microsoft software is really, truly and utterly a pile of shit.

> Is this a common problem? I did a search on google but only found one 
> post about it and it wasn't answered.

Yes - it's very common problem.

It's nothing unique to ODE though - so it probably doesn't belong on this
mailing list.

---------------------------- Steve Baker -------------------------
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