Bitcoin version 0.8.0 release candidate 1 is now available from:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.0/test
This is a major release designed to improve performance and handle the
increasing volume of transactions on the network.
Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues
Release-candidate 1 notes:
The OSX binary reports its version as "0.8.0rc1-1-gba1d080-beta" due to
issue https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2285 . This will be fixed
before the final 0.8.0 release.
The Windows binaries could not be reproducibly built, due to issue
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2288 . This will also be fixed
before the final 0.8.0 release. The rc1 Windows binaries were built
by me (Gavin).
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 bitcoin-qt (on Linux).
The first time you run after the upgrade a re-indexing process will be
started that will take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours,
depending on the speed of your machine. If you have enough
memory, running with the -dbcache setting (e.g. -dbcache=1000 )
may make re-indexing faster.
Special notes for release candidate 1:
--------------------------------------
If you helped test pre-release versions, there are two changes that you
should be aware of:
1. Subdirectories in the data directory changed names; to avoid re-indexing
the blockchain, rename:
mkdir $DATADIR/blocks && mv $DATADIR/blktree $DATADIR/blocks/index
mv $DATADIR/coins $DATADIR/chainstate
2. The "undo file" format changed; if you see errors at startup during block
validation re-run with the -reindex flag to fix them.
Incompatible Changes
--------------------
This release no longer maintains a full index of historical transaction ids
by default, so looking up an arbitrary transaction using the getrawtransaction
RPC call will not work. If you need that functionality, you must run once
with -txindex=1 -reindex=1 to rebuild block-chain indices (see below for more
details).
Improvements
------------
Mac and Windows binaries are signed with certificates owned by the Bitcoin
Foundation, to be compatible with the new security features in OSX 10.8 and
Windows 8.
LevelDB, a fast, open-source, non-relational database from Google, is
now used to store transaction and block indices. LevelDB works much better
on machines with slow I/O and is faster in general. Berkeley DB is now only
used for the wallet.dat file (public and private wallet keys and transactions
relevant to you).
Pieter Wuille implemented many optimizations to the way transactions are
verified, so a running, synchronized node uses much less memory and does
much less I/O. He also implemented parallel signature checking, so if you
have a multi-CPU machine all CPUs will be used to verify transactions.
New Features
------------
"Bloom filter" support in the network protocol for sending only relevant transactions to
lightweight clients.
contrib/verifysfbinaries is a shell-script to verify that the binary downloads
at sourceforge have not been tampered with. If you are able, you can help make
everybody's downloads more secure by running this occasionally to check PGP
signatures against download file checksums.
contrib/spendfrom is a python-language command-line utility that demonstrates
how to use the "raw transactions" JSON-RPC api to send coins received from particular
addresses (also known as "coin control").
New/changed settings (command-line or bitcoin.conf file)
--------------------------------------------------------
dbcache : now controls LevelDB memory usage. Running with (for example) -dbcache=1000
will use a gigabyte of memory and might make the initial blockchain download faster.
par : controls how many threads to use to validate transactions. Defaults to the number
of CPUs on your machine, use -par=1 to limit to a single CPU.
txindex : maintains an extra index of old, spent transaction ids so they will be found
by the getrawtransaction JSON-RPC method.
reindex : rebuild block and transaction indices from the downloaded block data.
New JSON-RPC API Features
-------------------------
lockunspent / listlockunspent allow locking transaction outputs for a period of time so
they will not be spent by other processes that might be accessing the same wallet.
addnode / getaddednodeinfo methods, to connect to specific peers without restarting.
importprivkey now takes an optional boolean parameter (default true) to control whether
or not to rescan the blockchain for transactions after importing a new private key.
Important Bug Fixes
-------------------
Privacy leak: the position of the "change" output in most transactions was not being
properly randomized, making network analysis of the transaction graph to identify
users' wallets easier.
Zero-confirmation transaction vulnerability: accepting zero-confirmation transactions
(transactions that have not yet been included in a block) from somebody you do not
trust is still not recommended, because there will always be ways for attackers to
double-spend zero-confirmation transactions. However, this release includes a bug
fix that makes it a little bit more difficult for attackers to double-spend a
certain type ("lockTime in the future") of zero-confirmation transaction.
Dependency Changes
------------------
Qt 4.8.3 (compiling against older versions of Qt 4 should continue to work)
Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release:
----------------------------------------------------
Alexander Kjeldaas
Andrey Alekseenko
Arnav Singh
Christian von Roques
Eric Lombrozo
Forrest Voight
Gavin Andresen
Gregory Maxwell
Jeff Garzik
Luke Dashjr
Matt Corallo
Mike Cassano
Mike Hearn
Peter Todd
Philip Kaufmann
Pieter Wuille
Richard Schwab
Robert Backhaus
Rune K. Svendsen
Sergio Demian Lerner
Wladimir J. van der Laan
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