[Bitcoin-development] 0.8.2rc1 ready for testing

[Bitcoin-development] 0.8.2rc1 ready for testing

[Gavin Andresen]

Bitcoin-Qt version 0.8.2 release candidate 1 is now available from:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.2/test/

This is a maintenance release that fixes many bugs and includes
a few small new features.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:
  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues


How to Upgrade
--------------

If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait
until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older
versions), then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over
/Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

If you are upgrading from version 0.7.2 or earlier, the first time you
run 0.8.2 your blockchain files will be re-indexed, which will take
anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the speed of
your machine.

0.8.2 Release notes
===================

Fee Policy changes
------------------

The default fee for low-priority transactions is lowered from 0.0005 BTC
(for each 1,000 bytes in the transaction; an average transaction is
about 500 bytes) to 0.0001 BTC.

Payments (transaction outputs) of 0.543 times the minimum relay fee
(0.00005430 BTC) are now considered 'non-standard', because storing them
costs the network more than they are worth and spending them will usually
cost their owner more in transaction fees than they are worth.

Non-standard transactions are not relayed across the network, are not included
in blocks by most miners, and will not show up in your wallet until they are
included in a block.

The default fee policy can be overridden using the -mintxfee and -minrelaytxfee
command-line options, but note that we intend to replace the hard-coded fees
with code that automatically calculates and suggests appropriate fees in the
0.9 release and note that if you set a fee policy significantly different from
the rest of the network your transactions may never confirm.

Bitcoin-Qt changes
------------------

* New icon and splash screen
* Improve reporting of synchronization process
* Remove hardcoded fee recommendations
* Improve metadata of executable on MacOSX and Windows
* Move export button to individual tabs instead of toolbar
* Add "send coins" command to context menu in address book
* Add "copy txid" command to copy transaction IDs from transaction overview
* Save & restore window size and position when showing & hiding window
* New translations: Arabic (ar), Bosnian (bs), Catalan (ca), Welsh (cy),
  Esperanto (eo), Interlingua (la), Latvian (lv) and many improvements
  to current translations

MacOSX:
* OSX support for click-to-pay (bitcoin:) links
* Fix GUI disappearing problem on MacOSX (issue #1522)

Linux/Unix:
* Copy addresses to middle-mouse-button clipboard


Command-line options
--------------------

* -walletnotify will call a command on receiving transactions that
affect the wallet.
* -alertnotify will call a command on receiving an alert from the network.
* -par now takes a negative number, to leave a certain amount of cores free.

JSON-RPC API changes
--------------------

* listunspent now lists account and address infromation.
* getinfo now also returns the time adjustment estimated from your peers.
* getpeerinfo now returns bytessent, bytesrecv and syncnode.
* gettxoutsetinfo returns statistics about the unspent transaction
output database.
* gettxout returns information about a specific unspent transaction output.


Networking changes
------------------

* Significant changes to the networking code, reducing latency and
memory consumption.
* Avoid initial block download stalling.
* Remove IRC seeding support.
* Performance tweaks.
* Added testnet DNS seeds.

Wallet compatibility/rescuing
-----------------------------

* Cases where wallets cannot be opened in another version/installation
should be reduced.
* -salvagewallet now works for encrypted wallets.


Thanks to everybody who contributed to the 0.8.2 release!
---------------------------------------------------------

APerson241
Andrew Poelstra
Calvin Owens
Chuck LeDuc Díaz
Colin Dean
David Griffith
David Serrano
Eric Lombrozo
Gavin Andresen
Gregory Maxwell
Jeff Garzik
Jonas Schnelli
Larry Gilbert
Luke Dashjr
Matt Corallo
Michael Ford
Mike Hearn
Patrick Brown
Peter Todd
Philip Kaufmann
Pieter Wuille
Richard Schwab
Roman Mindalev
Scott Howard
Tariq Bashir
Wladimir J. van der Laan
freewil
gladoscc
kjj2
mb300sd

Re: [Bitcoin-development] 0.8.2rc1 - testnet datadir behavior changed

[Jay F]

On 5/10/2013 8:39 AM, Gavin Andresen wrote:
> Bitcoin-Qt version 0.8.2 release candidate 1 is now available from:
>    http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.2/test/
>

Testnet glitch, something broke...

Fired up 0.8.2rc, and .... where's the coins? Where's the blocks?

I get a new empty datadir/testnet3 subdirectory.

bitcoin-qt.exe -datadir=c:\testnet (with a testnet=1 bitcoin.conf file 
option in that directory) stored wallet/blocks/chainstate in the root 
with previous versions. Now the root datadir data is ignored (except the 
config file) and a new hierarchy was created in subdirectory 
[b]/testnet3[/b].

So what's happening?

This looks to be done by https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2605 
... after searching the code for the change and then finding the commit.

1 day from opened to committed, released six days later... no changelog.


The datadir previously worked as I expected with both bitcoin-qt and 
bitcoind interacting with no problems, when simply specifying a 
command-line datadir, so I don't see the bug.

I can see how the previous behavior might be dangerous if the config 
file was removed. I just did that, and there's a cool freakout where my 
testnet wallet balance looks like real BTC and Bitcoin tries to reorg 
67662 blocks starting from the genesis block. After receiving real block 
73354 per debug log, a nice unrecoverable crash:

"Assertion failed!"
File: src/main.cpp Line 1745
Expression: pfork != NULL


This needs to be added to the changelog, since dropping in this binary 
will break testnet stuff if anybody is using Bitcoin this way for their 
testnet faucet, etc:

" * testnet data now stored in testnet3 subdirectory, enforced even when 
specifying datadir on command line (manually move your data first)"

Re: [Bitcoin-development] 0.8.2rc1 - testnet datadir behavior changed

[Pieter Wuille]

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On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Jay F <jayf@outlook.com> wrote:

> On 5/10/2013 8:39 AM, Gavin Andresen wrote:
> > Bitcoin-Qt version 0.8.2 release candidate 1 is now available from:
> >
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.2/test/
> >
>
> Testnet glitch, something broke...
>

I opened   https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2641 for this issue.

-- 
Pieter

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