Author: Wladimir J. van der Laan 2017-09-14 13:20:35
Published on: 2017-09-14T13:20:35+00:00
Bitcoin Core version 0.15.0 has been released, offering various updates and improvements to the software. The new release includes significant performance improvements that make Initial Block Download, startup, transaction, and block validation much faster. It also adds support for loading multiple, separate wallets. However, compatibility with Windows XP has been dropped, and the on-disk database is now 15% larger. A new file format has caused all fee estimates to be discarded.The update also brings a new node-level RPC method that displays which wallets are currently loaded. Multi-wallet is fully supported in this version, but the RPC multi-wallet interface should be considered unstable and may have backwards-incompatible changes in future versions. In addition, the GUI now supports creating opt-in replace-by-fee (RBF) transactions and replacing unconfirmed opt-in RBF transactions with a new transaction that pays a higher fee.Several updates and fixes have been made to various APIs and RPCs related to bitcoin transactions. The block and transaction handling system has undergone several updates, such as mempool persistence control using command line parameters, better fee estimates, and removal of coin age priority, among others. Some changes have been made in the CCoinsMap to improve its efficiency, and the chainstate db and cache have been switched to per-txout model. Additionally, some minor bugs have been fixed.The Bitcoin Core developers have also made changes to the P2P protocol and network code, validation, and the build system. The update offers various bug fixes and improvements in these areas, including better error codes for reject messages, cache full script execution results, and updates to hardcoded seeds. On the validation side, there are numerous enhancements, such as improvements to DisconnectBlock arguments/return value, optimizations for CuckooCache tests, and fixes for chain height and resource leaks. The build system has also been updated, with improved readability of segwit.py, smartfees.py, and other files, as well as the addition of several new test cases. Overall, the update is expected to improve the stability, security, and performance of the Bitcoin Core software.Apart from testing-related commits, there are also miscellaneous commits related to documentation and other improvements. The team has provided a guideline for contributors, an improved commit-check-script, and added release notes. They have also verified binaries from bitcoincore.org and bitcoin.org, provided instructions for parallel gitian builds, and updated build-openbsd for 6.1. There are also fixes for grammar mistakes, punctuation errors, and inaccurate help text. The team has made improvements to FastRandomContext and switched to ChaCha20, plugged leveldb logs to bitcoin logs, and prevented integer overflow in ReadVarInt.
Updated on: 2023-06-12T18:49:11.390955+00:00