assert() never runs in a build we ship. assembleRelease maps to the
RelWithDebInfo CMake config, whose stock CMAKE_CXX_FLAGS_RELWITHDEBINFO
carries -DNDEBUG, and CMakeLists appends -O3 to that variable rather than
replacing it, so nothing removes the define. All 123 first-party asserts were
therefore diagnostics that existed only in debug and test runs -- the two
places the invariants were least likely to be violated.

Two macros replace them, both in NativeScriptAssert.h:

  NS_CHECK  evaluates and aborts in every configuration.
  NS_DCHECK evaluates and aborts in debug builds only.

61 sites become NS_CHECK: the JNIEnv/JavaVM handles and the jclass, jmethodID
and jfieldID lookups resolved once during runtime initialisation from fixed
class names, plus the per-isolate V8StringConstants block. Every one of them
is used unconditionally a statement or two later, so a null there is undefined
behaviour today and surfaces as a tombstone pointing at whatever ran next.
JEnv::GetMethodID and friends already call CheckForJavaException, so these
fire only when a lookup returns null with no pending Java exception; they are
backstops, not the primary error path.

The remaining 62 sites keep debug-only semantics as NS_DCHECK. Notably
MethodCache and FieldAccessor check the result of JEnv::FindClass, which
deliberately returns nullptr with a pending Java exception for a class that is
genuinely missing and lets the caller raise a NativeScriptException. Aborting
there would turn a handled, recoverable path into a crash.

A failed NS_CHECK records the expression and source location through
CrashBreadcrumbs::RecordFatal and logs it at ANDROID_LOG_FATAL, which claims
the bionic abort message slot, so the check names itself in the tombstone and
in the breadcrumb file the next launch reports. RecordFatal takes no lock and
writes a buffer the signal handler already knows how to emit, so it is safe on
a thread that is aborting from under one of the runtime's own locks.

NS_DCHECK still compiles its expression when NDEBUG is defined, in a branch
that is never taken, so an expression that stops making sense is a build
failure instead of something only a debug build notices. It follows that the
expression must stay free of side effects, exactly as with assert().