dash/doc/release-notes.md
Wladimir J. van der Laan f19ca129ff
Merge #11605: [Wallet] Enable RBF by default in QT
5cbbbd7 [Wallet] Use RBF by default in QT only (Sjors Provoost)

Pull request description:

  ~If there are no objections, this would supersede #11556.~

  Enabling RBF by default avoids the need to explain all possible use cases of RBF.

  This PR does not change the default RPC wallet behavior, as this could break implementations that depend on it and it's not clear what happens when automated services suddenly switch on RBF on a large scale.

  After trying various approaches, we settled on just having QT ignore `-walletrbf`.

  Send screen:
  <img width="388" alt="send" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/10217/34251097-329c8dee-e63f-11e7-9e14-d7f55d2b52cc.png">

  Confirmation screen by default (with RBF):
  <img width="429" alt="rbf yes" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/10217/32442799-f50d54aa-c2fc-11e7-9392-96339d0f1f74.png">

  Confirmation screen without RBF:
  <img width="431" alt="rf no" src="https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/10217/32442793-ef30bc34-c2fc-11e7-8ca2-e86a97175278.png">

Tree-SHA512: 53efb5d277144478143e69dcae8112c1b9c2beb981fdd0fe778592e5f7d5bf838f73d48052ead874586a75b944e8af469b25e5f376c135cf48cc3598e77f5891
2017-12-22 13:15:31 +01:00

4.8 KiB

(note: this is a temporary file, to be added-to by anybody, and moved to release-notes at release time)

Bitcoin Core version version is now available from:

https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-*version*/

This is a new major version release, including new features, various bugfixes and performance improvements, as well as updated translations.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at GitHub:

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues

To receive security and update notifications, please subscribe to:

https://bitcoincore.org/en/list/announcements/join/

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).

The first time you run version 0.15.0, your chainstate database will be converted to a new format, which will take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour, depending on the speed of your machine.

Note that the block database format also changed in version 0.8.0 and there is no automatic upgrade code from before version 0.8 to version 0.15.0. Upgrading directly from 0.7.x and earlier without redownloading the blockchain is not supported. However, as usual, old wallet versions are still supported.

Downgrading warning

The chainstate database for this release is not compatible with previous releases, so if you run 0.15 and then decide to switch back to any older version, you will need to run the old release with the -reindex-chainstate option to rebuild the chainstate data structures in the old format.

If your node has pruning enabled, this will entail re-downloading and processing the entire blockchain.

Compatibility

Bitcoin Core is extensively tested on multiple operating systems using the Linux kernel, macOS 10.8+, and Windows Vista and later. Windows XP is not supported.

Bitcoin Core should also work on most other Unix-like systems but is not frequently tested on them.

Notable changes

GCC 4.8.x

The minimum version of GCC required to compile Bitcoin Core is now 4.8. No effort will be made to support older versions of GCC. See discussion in issue #11732 for more information.

HD-wallets by default

Due to a backward-incompatible change in the wallet database, wallets created with version 0.16.0 will be rejected by previous versions. Also, version 0.16.0 will only create hierarchical deterministic (HD) wallets.

Replace-By-Fee by default in GUI

The send screen now uses BIP-125 RBF by default, regardless of -walletrbf. There is a checkbox to mark the transaction as final.

The RPC default remains unchanged: to use RBF, launch with -walletrbf=1 or use the replaceable argument for individual transactions.

Custom wallet directories

The ability to specify a directory other than the default data directory in which to store wallets has been added. An existing directory can be specified using the -walletdir=<dir> argument. Wallets loaded via -wallet arguments must be in this wallet directory. Care should be taken when choosing a wallet directory location, as if it becomes unavailable during operation, funds may be lost.

Default wallet directory change

On new installations (if the data directory doesn't exist), wallets will now be stored in a new wallets/ subdirectory inside the data directory. If this wallets/ subdirectory doesn't exist (i.e. on existing nodes), the current datadir root is used instead, as it was.

Low-level RPC changes

  • The deprecated RPC getinfo was removed. It is recommended that the more specific RPCs are used:
    • getblockchaininfo
    • getnetworkinfo
    • getwalletinfo
    • getmininginfo
  • The wallet RPC getreceivedbyaddress will return an error if called with an address not in the wallet.

Changed command-line options

  • -debuglogfile=<file> can be used to specify an alternative debug logging file.

Renamed script for creating JSON-RPC credentials

The share/rpcuser/rpcuser.py script was renamed to share/rpcauth/rpcauth.py. This script can be used to create rpcauth credentials for a JSON-RPC user.

  • dumpwallet now includes hex-encoded scripts from the wallet in the dumpfile, and importwallet now imports these scripts, but corresponding addresses may not be added correctly or a manual rescan may be required to find relevant transactions.

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.