I would suggest that we still call it 'assert', but somehow we get the wine specific one from the headers (like wine/debug.h).
Yeah, it would limit the change to the 218 files to just removal of the #include line (plus also maybe addition of 'wine/debug.h').
If nobody yells before monday, I will send a patch for your step 1. by then. Then we will have to discuss exactly what features Wine's own assert should have :-)
just to help confusing users, defining our own assert.h would do too (and it would also work while porting program with winelib)
A+