[Bitcoin-development] Question on creating test cases for block.CheckBlock()

[Bitcoin-development] Question on creating test cases for block.CheckBlock()

[Sergio Lerner]

I'm working on a BIP which needs to modify the block acceptance rules. I
have two ways of testing:

- Mining blocks on the testnet
- Creating test cases for Bitcoin Core.

I want to create those test cases for block.CheckBlock(), which involves
verifying 100 dynamically generated blocks.
What is the state of the blockchain when a test case is executed ? Is is
configured for the regtest, testnet3 or mainnet? What blocks are in the
blockchain? Only the genesis block?

checkblock_tests.cpp seems to be the only test case for CheckBlock() and
it assumes the mainnet is configured.
I need to use the regtest so I can create blocks of difficulty 1.

Best regards and thank you in advance,

Re: [Bitcoin-development] Question on creating test cases for block.CheckBlock()

[Mike Hearn]

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There is no infrastructure for writing block chain unit tests
unfortunately. Last time I tried to fix this I ended up going down a rabbit
hole - Bitcoin wasn't written to be a testable codebase and as a result
reinitialising it from scratch is rather difficult (there are lots of
global variables that have to be reset to particular states and no real
list of where they are).

Instead what I ended up doing is extending the pull tester. This is a
bitcoinj based app (BitcoindComparisonTool in the codebase) which builds a
regtest chain and submits it to a local regtest node. It tests things like
reorgs and various rules. It speaks to the node only via P2P so how easy it
is to verify your BIP works will depend on that. Also the code needs
cleaning up, there's a lot of copy/paste coding going on in there.




On Mon, Jul 21, 2014 at 7:30 PM, Sergio Lerner <sergiolerner@certimix.com>
wrote:

> I'm working on a BIP which needs to modify the block acceptance rules. I
> have two ways of testing:
>
> - Mining blocks on the testnet
> - Creating test cases for Bitcoin Core.
>
> I want to create those test cases for block.CheckBlock(), which involves
> verifying 100 dynamically generated blocks.
> What is the state of the blockchain when a test case is executed ? Is is
> configured for the regtest, testnet3 or mainnet? What blocks are in the
> blockchain? Only the genesis block?
>
> checkblock_tests.cpp seems to be the only test case for CheckBlock() and
> it assumes the mainnet is configured.
> I need to use the regtest so I can create blocks of difficulty 1.
>
> Best regards and thank you in advance,
>
>
>
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