Always panic through utils.Assert

[dfarr]

Sometimes when we encounter an intolerable error we call panic() directly, instead we could call utils.Assert(false, ...) that way we would have the opportunity to optionally turn off strict panicing in production.

[guergabo]

this would be nice to expose as a flag like --strict

[KannappanChida]

@guergabo I'm interested to work on this enhancement, can i work on this issue

[guergabo]

@KannappanChida. of course. lmk if you need any help. thank you !

[guergabo]

interesting approach at sqlite. They have different behaviors for asserts depending on the build: https://www.sqlite.org/assert.html#:~:text=In%20SQLite%2C%20the%20presence%20of,about%20the%20truth%20of%20X.