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From: Jeff Garzik <jgarzik@bitpay.com>
Date: Fri, 6 Jun 2014 20:57:04 -0400
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Cc: Bitcoin Dev <bitcoin-development@lists.sourceforge.net>
Subject: Re: [Bitcoin-development] # error "Bitcoin cannot be compiled
 without assertions." <<<<NOT
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Speaking very generally, the Linux kernel wisdom on this tends to be,

* Compile in as many cheap, compiler-predictable asserts as possible
into the production runtime.
* Debug builds are of limited value.  Users do not recompile software,
just to provide better bug reports/diagnostics.
* Make it as easy as possible for users to send reports that are
useful to programmers.
* Expensive diagnostics are fine. Compile in, but disable by default
at runtime (and make sure these features, when turned off, do not slow
down the system).
* Make sure the assert/dump provides a high level of diagnostics.
Stack trace of each thread + multi-threaded core dump are a good
start.

-- 
Jeff Garzik
Bitcoin core developer and open source evangelist
BitPay, Inc.      https://bitpay.com/