Well, code like this doesn't trigger a warning when compiled with g++
$ cat trial.cpp #include <cassert>
int foo(bool a) { if (a) return 0; assert(false); }
$ g++ -W -Wall -c trial.cpp
Compare that with:
$ g++ -DNDEBUG -W -Wall -c trial.cpp trial.cpp: In function `int foo(bool)': trial.cpp:7: warning: control reaches end of non-void function
Clearly, the compiler is able to ascertain that execution won't proceed past the assert. It doesn't seem so unreasonable to hope that BOOST_STATIC_ASSERT would behave similarly.
The problem is that __attribute__((noreturn)) can only be applied to a *function call which will never return*, a static assertion does not generate a function call (indeed must not do so), so there is nothing to which that attribute can be applied. If you know differently then I'm all ears, Regards, John.