UPRV_UNREACHABLE, which now unconditionally calls abort(), is called in u_UCharsToChars() if that function is passed a non-invariant character:
This used to call U_ASSERT which is a no-op in production code:
This UPRV_UNREACHABLE can easily be reached not only by direct calls to u_UCharsToChars (in which case there is at least API documentation that says that it is not intended for non-invariant chars) but indirectly, e.g. via a call to ucal_getTimeZoneIDForWindowsID() that is passed a (presumably malformed) Windows zoneID containing non-invariant chars.
This is rather bad.
Just hit another one of these in i18n/usearch.cpp:
This is crashing production code on our platforms.
Per TC dicussion: Will use this fix for a PR against master that just reverts the specific change in u_UCharsToChars(); that may go into a maintenance branch. File another ticket for a broader investigation of use of UPRV_UNREACHABLE, including the CEIBuffer::get[Previous] issue in the comment above.
Thank you Peter!
Filed for the follow-on issue