[Pharo-dev] Disable assertions (design by contract)

Hi Assertions play an important role in design by contract. It is great to have assertions in Pharo out of box (Object>>#assert:). However in projects with many post- and precondition as also class invariants heavy usage of assertions decreases performance... Would it be possible to have a compiler setting (in setting browser) to enable/disable assertions and not compile them to bytecode? Compiler should ignore the whole assertion statement with removed condition. For example:

self assert: self hugeInvariant.

with disabled assertion hugeInvariant must not be sent. Thanks, Alex