How can I completely disable calls to assert()?

You can either disable assertions completely by

#define NDEBUG
#include <assert.h>

or you can set NDEBUG (via -DNDEBUG) in your makefile/build procedure depending on whether you want a productive or dev version.

Use #define NDEBUG

7.2 Diagnostics

1 The header defines the assert macro and refers to another macro,

NDEBUG

which is not defined by <assert.h>. If NDEBUG is defined as a macro name at the point in the source file where is included, the assert macro is defined simply as

#define assert(ignore) ((void)0)

The assert macro is redefined according to the current state of NDEBUG each time that <assert.h> is included.

You must #define NDEBUG (or use the flag -DNDEBUG with g++) this will disable assert as long as it's defined before the inclusion of the assert header file.

The -g flag doesn't affect the operation of assert, it just ensures that various debugging symbols are available.

Setting NDEBUG is the standard (as in official, ISO standard) way of disabling assertions.