Re: "Assertion failed!"

[David Kastrup]

Andrew Bernard <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi David,
>
> The one I have reported dumps core. So pretty much a fatal error.

Assertion failures always dump core.  The idea is that they dump core at
a point of time where one is still reasonably close to the problem
rather than at some arbitrary point later.

A core dump can be used for analyzing the state of the program at the
point of the core dump.

> But it is good to know the program behaviour has been altered and that
> accounts for why we are suddenly seeing assertion failures when they
> occur.

The difference is just that the production version of LilyPond no longer
ignores assertions and just crosses fingers.

Some assertions might warrant converting into programming errors, some
assertions might warrant finding the cause and either fixing it or
putting up some sensible continuation strategy.

At any rate, the failed assertions will not go away by themselves:
making suitable small examples and reporting them on the bug reporting
list will give developers a chance to look at them as they occur.

-- 
David Kastrup