Use `debug` instead of `hidden` in debug conf options #7803

nitely · 2025-12-15T15:22:03Z

Changes:

Change debug- prefixed conf options from hidden to debug. They will show when setting --help:debug

Note there are more hidden options. I only changed the ones that have debug- prefix.

Bump confutils:

nitely · 2025-12-15T17:45:36Z

beacon_chain/conf.nim

-      debug
      desc: "A positive epoch selects the epoch at which to stop"
      defaultValue: 0
      name: "debug-stop-at-epoch" .}: uint64


should this contain the debug pragma?
note it's not hidden.

It's a mistaken/an oversight it's not hidden. But the documentation already says it's not supported, effectively, so the better thing to do is mark it hidden.

nitely · 2025-12-15T17:48:46Z

beacon_chain/conf.nim

+        debug
        desc: "The wall-time epoch at which to exit the program. (for testing purposes)"
        defaultValue: 0
        name: "debug-stop-at-epoch" .}: uint64


There is a hidden stopAtSyncedEpoch below this option. Should that be switched to debug? (also adding debug- prefix).

github-actions · 2025-12-15T19:27:27Z

Unit Test Results

      12 files ±0   2 436 suites ±0 49m 37s ⏱️ + 2m 2s
12 678 tests ±0 12 113 ✔️ ±0 565 💤 ±0 0 ❌ ±0
63 716 runs ±0 62 988 ✔️ ±0 728 💤 ±0 0 ❌ ±0

Results for commit a178360. ± Comparison against base commit a49ed22.

tersec · 2025-12-16T11:30:33Z

Generally speaking, hidden is intentional in many-to-all of those cases; they're not meant to be documented at all.

And, no, stopAtSyncedEpoch definitely isn't meant to be documented. If people want to wander through source code, that's up to them, but it's not in any way a supported or generally applicable option. It's a specific artifact of running CI and CI-like setups.

tersec · 2025-12-16T11:32:55Z

beacon_chain/conf.nim


      trustedSetupFile* {.
-        hidden
+        debug


This is/was something to help Ethpandaops run their devnets. That's ... I think? the only use it ever got, and better that it would not be visible at all.

Also regarding this one, I'm not sure it's been used since the Dencun devnets, or has any remaining usecases now that the KZG setup is confirmed/set.

For theoretical-other-KZG setups, they'd be coming with other changes realistically anyway. A parameter to tweak this specifically is likely obsolete even for testing.

tersec · 2025-12-16T11:33:57Z

beacon_chain/conf.nim


      longRangeSync* {.
-        hidden
+        debug


This isn't really a "debugging" option, it's a feature that we never ended up enforcing, for various reasons.

etc etc etc

All of these have similar stories. hidden, not debug insofar as it would make them visible with a --help:debug option.

tersec · 2025-12-16T11:34:58Z

beacon_chain/conf.nim


    debugPeerdasSupernode* {.
-      hidden
+      debug


This one is going away soon anyway, as announced in a recent release notes. It's --debug and that's what --debug-foo options do.

So definitely not something to add visibility to now.

Also this one has been replaced by a supported option, anyway. Turned out there was nontrivial demand due to the blob use cases. So especially useless as a "debug" option.

again, the key is to set expectations and document the change: 'In release XYZ, --debug-frob has migrated to --frob - the old name will be removed in the 25.x release'

See elsewhere. The point is for this PR that it's a useless thing to expose.

arnetheduck · 2025-12-16T11:36:32Z

intentional

the idea behind debug is that it's also hidden by default, but for debugging, testing and similar special cases they can be brought forward - "things that pandaops wants to try" qualify for this, for example, or things we might suggest to users to get out of a bind

it's important that all these options can be discovered using --help somehow - ie in order to understand their syntax when using them. Their main difference is that they're not part of the stable flag set

tersec · 2025-12-16T11:41:30Z

Special cases become "supported" cases.

arnetheduck · 2025-12-16T11:44:24Z

Special cases become "supported" cases.

For the cases where this happens, they are migrated to a supported case, with the old option left with a deprecation warning allowing users to migrate too, without breaking their setups unnecessarily - the key is to manage the migration path so that those that use these options understand what's happening.

tersec · 2025-12-16T11:53:48Z

My actual tendencies for these:

I'd check with pandaops if there's any actual usecase left, and if not, remove even trustedSetupFile configuration
longRangeSync was a half-baked artifact of a sync method which never quite made it, remove option (i.e. allow long-range sync, as its default value is already "Lenient")
keep various debug-stop-at-epochs hidden. They're very CI-focused; they're not actually what pandaops and other testing tends to use, because they usually want tests which run indefinitely
for the debug peerdas supernode setting, per https://github.com/status-im/nimbus-eth2/releases/tag/v25.11.1 remove it, but give it another release or so

test confutils debug

2e4a90b

github-actions bot closed this Dec 15, 2025

nitely deleted the debug_confutils branch December 15, 2025 15:23

nitely restored the debug_confutils branch December 15, 2025 15:23

nitely reopened this Dec 15, 2025

nitely changed the base branch from stable to unstable December 15, 2025 16:45

github-actions bot closed this Dec 15, 2025

nitely reopened this Dec 15, 2025

status-im deleted a comment from github-actions bot Dec 15, 2025

nitely added 2 commits December 15, 2025 13:51

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nitely changed the title ~~test debug confutils~~ Use debug instead of hidden in debug conf options Dec 15, 2025

nitely added 2 commits December 15, 2025 14:39

back to hidden

dd8aaed

remove debug

a178360

nitely commented Dec 15, 2025

View reviewed changes

nitely marked this pull request as ready for review December 15, 2025 19:35

tersec reviewed Dec 16, 2025

View reviewed changes

Use debug instead of hidden in debug conf options #7803

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Use `debug` instead of `hidden` in debug conf options #7803

Use `debug` instead of `hidden` in debug conf options #7803

nitely commented Dec 15, 2025 •

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arnetheduck commented Dec 16, 2025 •

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