I did some searching in the closed issues, and it looks like the decision was to raise an exception when attempting to use ModelSerializer with an abstract base class model. (#2757)

I have a model that inherits from an abstract base class model. No exception was thrown by DRF. Additionally, the Serializer doesn't generate the fields for the sub-class, instead it only renders the fields from the abstract base class.

If this isn't going to be supported, the assertion should probably check if the superclass is abstract and then fail loudly.

I'm on DRF 3.1.3.