assert not working any more in 3.2

[pschatzmann]

Board

Any

Device Description

n/a

Hardware Configuration

n/a

Version

latest development Release Candidate (RC-X) and in the meantime also the release 3.2.0

IDE Name

Arduino

Operating System

Linux

Flash frequency

n/a

PSRAM enabled

no

Upload speed

n/a

Description

Up to and including R 3.1 using assert was giving the following type of error messages

assert failed: void setup() file_speeds.ino:100 (SD.begin(PIN_AUDIO_KIT_SD_CARD_CS))

Backtrace: 0x40082541:0x3ffb1f30 0x4008d919:0x3ffb1f50 0x40093afe:0x3ffb1f70 0x400d404b:0x3ffb20a0 0x400dbbbf:0x3ffb2270 0x4008e592:0x3ffb2290

Starting R 3.2 asserts are ignored

Sketch

Just add an assert(false); to the setup()

Debug Message

N/A

Other Steps to Reproduce

No response

I have checked existing issues, online documentation and the Troubleshooting Guide

• I confirm I have checked existing issues, online documentation and Troubleshooting guide.

[pschatzmann]

Any progress ?
I think this is quite serious and I am surprised that in the meantime you also decided to released 3.2.0 with this error...

[me-no-dev]

It took me a bit of searching :) Seems that -DNDEBUG is added by esp-matter by default and that disables assert. You can probably do your own macro that uses abort() instead, which works

[me-no-dev]

cc: @SuGlider

[SuGlider]

I'll take a look, but if Matter Library disables it, it can be fixed by Lib Builder for the next release.

[SuGlider]

@pschatzmann - I have found a work around that fixes this issue using Core 3.2.0 (or any 3.x).
Add a file called build_opt.h to your Arduino project.
In this file add a line with -UNDEBUG, save it, build and upload the project to the ESP32. assert() will work now.

This will undefine NDEBUG and retore assert() functionality.

[pschatzmann]

Thanks a lot for the work around: I confirm that this is working.

Looking forward for the final correction...

[me-no-dev]

@SuGlider what worries me is that matter disables assert throughout our ESP-IDF precompiled libs. Can you check this with the Matter team please?

[SuGlider]

@SuGlider what worries me is that matter disables assert throughout our ESP-IDF precompiled libs. Can you check this with the Matter team please?

Actually, when CHIP builds using release mode, it sets -DNDEBUG in order to avoid executing not necessary debugging code.
Arduino Lib Builder pick it up and includes it into the flags/defines file.

It doesn't affect other IDF components.
It only affects CHIP building process (there is a CHIP scriptBUILD.gn for creating CMakeLists.txt in CHIP before building it).

It doesn't affect esp-matter IDF code or any other IDF component.

[me-no-dev]

it picks it up because the project files are compiled with this flag. If they are compiled with it, chances are that others are compiled also. We extract flags from the 3 empty files in the lib-builder main (c, cpp and S)