You should be able to use static final private boolean DEBUG = true/false;

Then have if (DEBUG) { ... } else { ... } blocks in your code, and the compiler will eliminate the segments that can never possibly be run.

To answer your question, no, Java, does not have anything like that.  If you want to be nutty, you can run a java source through the gcc preprocessor before compiling (I've seen this done in a few places) to use #define, #ifdef, etc., but I hardly recommend this practice.  The Java compiler and vm is generally pretty good at this kind of optimization.

Marcello

it's supposed to. in practice it usually does, but it depends on the compiler.