ASSERTS in RELEASE mode

[strasdat]

review / design behavior of ASSERT macros when compiled in RELEASE mode

options

• turn then all off
• turn them into warnings (no aborts)
• leave them as is, but introduce DASSERT macros which only fire in DEBUG or in DEBUG+RelWithDebInfo mode
• etc.

There is no plan to chnge behavior for ASSERTs in DEBUG and RelWithDebInfo modes.

[wylderkeane]

I generally think leaving assert statements active in release mode when they prevent undefined behavior in the system. A quick crash is better than having undefined behavior that may lead to corrupt data or other undesirable results. This, combined with caching core dumps will allow us to more quickly root cause the bad behavior and fix it.

That said, for any assert statements that can actually be handled gracefully we should convert to a warning and continue or return gracefully. In other words, we should not assert on bad input when there's a way to continue executing without compromising the program behavior.