Remove assert dependency from library #8126

[wdunn001]

Checklist

• [x] DCO (Developer Certificate of Origin) signed in all commits
• [x] npm test passes on your machine
• [x] New tests added or existing tests modified to cover all changes
• [x] Code conforms with the style guide
• [x] API Documentation in code was updated
• [x] Documentation in /docs/site was updated
• [x] Affected artifact templates in packages/cli were updated
• [x] Affected example projects in examples/* were updated

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[achrinza]

The assert library throws an AssertionError with a specific configuration:

https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/1aaa4eb8886fb77a0e1a25de28dbf13188df4fbf/lib/assert.js#L378-L402

Would we be able to keep that backwards compatibility?

[wdunn001]

The assert library throws an AssertionError with a specific configuration:

https://github.com/nodejs/node/blob/1aaa4eb8886fb77a0e1a25de28dbf13188df4fbf/lib/assert.js#L378-L402

Would we be able to keep that backwards compatibility?

done

[wdunn001]

@agnes512 @achrinza any update on this?

[raymondfeng]

What's the motivation to remove assert? For front-end compatibility?

[wdunn001]

What's the motivation to remove assert? For front-end compatibility?

Yes, that's mainly why. We were using this with angular before the recent webpack update that throws an error because assert is a node-only library and would require polyfills. But assert is barely used in this library and serves no real purpose. Currently, we created an internal version of this library without the assert dependency and use it to pass filters to the backend.