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From: "Wladimir J. van der Laan" <laanwj@gmail.com>
To: "Jorge Timón" <jtimon@jtimon.cc>
Cc: bitcoin-dev@lists.linuxfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [bitcoin-dev] Libconsensus separated repository (was Bitcoin Core and hard forks)
Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2015 10:43:14 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20150728084312.GA29453@amethyst.visucore.com> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <CABm2gDrApVuxF8DFf32V=pQhDKvvVfcDK=LeCXJ9h9o8CY+wNQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Jul 23, 2015 at 04:30:06PM +0200, Jorge Timón via bitcoin-dev wrote:

> I think there were some misunderstandings in our previous conversation
> about this topic.
> I completely agree with having a separated repository for libconsensus
> (that's the whole point, alternative implementations can be
> consensus-safe by using it, and in the event of a schism fork[1], they
> can fork just that smaller project without having to relay on Bitcoin
> Core [satoshi] at all).

Indeed.

> But I thought you also wanted Bitcoin Core to use libconsensus instead
> of just having a subtree/subrepository like it currently does with
> libsecp256k1.
> I'm not sure if that would ever be accepted, but in any case we're
> certainly far away from that goal. Here are some things that need to
> happen first:

I don't see any reason why Bitcoin Core would not use the consensus library. Eating our own dogfood and such.

Biggest risk, as I've said before, is that the refactoring loading to a (more complete) consensus library will result in code that is no longer bug-for-bug compatible with previous versions, thus defeating its entire purpose and introducing fork risk.

If that can be avoided - for example by going from here to there using pure code moves, as you're trying to do - I'm all for it.

> 2) Finish libconsensus's API: expose more things than VerifyScript, at
> the very least, also expose VerifyTx, VerifyHeader and VerifyBlock.
> Feedback from alternative implementations like libbitcoin is extremely
> valuable here. Some related closed-for-now PRs:

Agreed.

> 3) Move libconsensus to a separate repository as a
> subtree/subrepository of Bitcoin Core.

If the rest is done, this is the easy part :)

> Unfortunately and ironically again, safer, small and incremental
> changes are less interesting for reviewers.
> For example, I've been trying to move consensus code to the consensus
> folder for a long time. The correctness of a MOVEONLY change is
> trivial to review for anyone who knows how to copy/paste in its
> favorite editor and how to use git diff, but will I ever get answers
> to my questions in [1]?

Code review capacity is still our greatest bottleneck.
And I don't see any way out of that, unfortunately.

> I know there's many people who really care about this, Cory Fields,
> Wladimir and Pieter Wuille to name a few have reviewed many of this
> changes (I've just got used to publicly whine about lack of review on
> this front and policy encapsulation [very related fronts] as an
> attempt to get some attention: not always, but begging for review
> actually works some times).

I do really care about this.

Wladimir



  parent reply	other threads:[~2015-07-28  8:43 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 28+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2015-07-23 14:30 [bitcoin-dev] Libconsensus separated repository (was Bitcoin Core and hard forks) Jorge Timón
2015-07-23 14:57 ` Milly Bitcoin
2015-07-23 21:02   ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-23 21:30     ` Milly Bitcoin
2015-07-28  6:40 ` Eric Voskuil
2015-07-28  8:47   ` Wladimir J. van der Laan
2015-07-28  9:58   ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-29 20:38     ` Eric Voskuil
2015-07-29 21:46       ` Jorge Timón
2015-08-20  0:53         ` Jorge Timón
2015-08-20  7:14           ` Tamas Blummer
2015-08-20  8:06             ` Jorge Timón
2015-08-20  8:35               ` Tamas Blummer
2015-08-20 17:44                 ` Matt Corallo
2015-08-20 21:26                   ` Tamas Blummer
2015-08-20 21:35                     ` Matt Corallo
2015-08-21  6:46                       ` Tamas Blummer
2015-08-21 19:46                 ` Jorge Timón
2015-08-21 20:07                   ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-08-22 11:04                   ` Tamas Blummer
2015-08-23  1:23                     ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-08-23  2:19                       ` Eric Lombrozo
2015-08-23  6:42                       ` Tamas Blummer
2015-08-29 23:30                         ` Jorge Timón
2015-08-29 23:25                       ` Jorge Timón
2015-08-29 22:08                     ` Jorge Timón
2015-07-28  8:43 ` Wladimir J. van der Laan [this message]
2015-07-28 10:09   ` Jorge Timón

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