Published on: 2014-10-27T11:37:47+00:00
Melvin Carvalho suggested creating a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal (BIP) as a way to put forth ideas and proposals for the development of Bitcoin. The new REST interface was seen as a good starting point for further discussion, as it already exports information that is available in Bitcoin Core's internals. However, it will not be developed into a full-fledged block explorer. Feedback on the HTTP headers and form of the REST interface was welcomed, with plans to add last-modified and etag headers. There are also proposals to export UTXOs and rebuild the RPC server to something multithreaded.In an email conversation between Melvin and Wladimir, Melvin asked for documentation on the REST API for electronic coins, which he was also working on. Wladimir referred him to the opening post by Jeff Garzik, which contained some documentation on how to use the API. However, there was currently no write-up about the current functionality in the release notes. Melvin offered to help with documentation. Melvin also asked about the stability of version 1 of the API going forward and whether or not there would be support to develop this interface into something that would be W3C standards compliant. Wladimir responded saying that it's not too late to make changes to version 1 as it hasn't been merged yet. He mentioned that a W3C standard takes a long time to come through, but it may be more useful to have the API available rather than wait for the API to be standardized. Wladimir noted that they are only interested in exposing read-only, public data that is already available in Bitcoin Core's internals. They are not aiming to add a fully-fledged block explorer with address indexes, although that could be part of the standard if it allows implementations to support just a subset. Finally, Wladimir suggested that Melvin coordinate his efforts with Jeff Garzik and consider putting down some thoughts and proposals in a BIP.Another user named Luke Dashjr reached out to Wladimir, asking for his opinion on what is ready and not too risky to be included in version 0.10 of Bitcoin Core. Luke mentioned that they needed a bug fix for submitblock, CreateNewBlock, and miner_tests. He also suggested introducing CNodePolicy for putting isolated node policy code. Harmless changes including support for returning specific rejection reasons, support for BIP 23 block proposal, elaborating on signverify message dialog warning, and further commits to merge after the introduction of CNodePolicy were also proposed. The miners requested enabling customization of node policy for data carrier data size with a low-risk configuration change. Wladimir approved all the changes except for the full-blown "miner policy class," which he thought was best to wait for version 0.11.There is also a query related to current dust change handling and a suggested feature related to dusting in Bitcoin Core. Wladimir confirms that floating/smart fees have been merged into Core 0.10 via two GitHub pull requests. Wladimir proposed a plan for the release of Bitcoin 0.10, suggesting splitting off a 0.10 branch on November 18th and releasing 10.0rc1 on December 1st to start the Release Candidate cycle. The RC cycle would run until no critical problems are found, with the final release expected no later than January 2015. Major work that needed to be merged before November 18th included BIP62, Verification library, Gitian descriptors overhaul, Autoprune, adding "warmup mode" for RPC server, and adding unauthenticated HTTP REST interface.On October 26, 2014, a user named odinn inquired about transaction fee changes and txconfirmtarget in Bitcoin Core 0.10. In response, Wladimir confirmed that the floating/smart fees had been merged into Core 0.10 through two GitHub pull requests.In an email conversation, a user named Q asked for clarification regarding transaction fee changes and txconfirmtarget described in the release notes for Bitcoin Core 0.10. Wladimir responds to this by proposing a timeline for the release of 0.10, mentioning that any pending development for 0.10 should be merged before November 18th. Major work that he is aware of includes BIP62, Verification library, Gitian descriptors overhaul, Autoprune, adding "warmup mode" for RPC server, and adding unauthenticated HTTP REST interface. He encourages users to help along the development process by participating in testing and reviewing the mentioned pull requests, or just by testing master and reporting bugs and regressions.The Bitcoin Core developers are planning to release version 0.10 of the software by January 2015. In order to meet this deadline, major developments that have already been proposed need to be merged before November 18th.
Updated on: 2023-08-01T10:33:19.491247+00:00