0.8.2rc1 ready for testing

Bitcoin-Qt version 0.8.2 release candidate 1 is now available from:
  http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.2/test/

This is a maintenance release that fixes many bugs and includes a few small new features.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at github:
  https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues

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).

If you are upgrading from version 0.7.2 or earlier, the first time you run 0.8.2 your blockchain files will be re-indexed, which will take anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours, depending on the speed of your machine.

0.8.2 Release notes ===================

Fee Policy changes ------------------

The default fee for low-priority transactions is lowered from 0.0005 BTC (for each 1,000 bytes in the transaction; an average transaction is about 500 bytes) to 0.0001 BTC.

Payments (transaction outputs) of 0.543 times the minimum relay fee (0.00005430 BTC) are now considered 'non-standard', because storing them costs the network more than they are worth and spending them will usually cost their owner more in transaction fees than they are worth.

Non-standard transactions are not relayed across the network, are not included in blocks by most miners, and will not show up in your wallet until they are included in a block.

The default fee policy can be overridden using the -mintxfee and -minrelaytxfee command-line options, but note that we intend to replace the hard-coded fees with code that automatically calculates and suggests appropriate fees in the 0.9 release and note that if you set a fee policy significantly different from the rest of the network your transactions may never confirm.

Bitcoin-Qt changes ------------------

* New icon and splash screen
* Improve reporting of synchronization process
* Remove hardcoded fee recommendations
* Improve metadata of executable on MacOSX and Windows
* Move export button to individual tabs instead of toolbar
* Add "send coins" command to context menu in address book
* Add "copy txid" command to copy transaction IDs from transaction overview
* Save & restore window size and position when showing & hiding window
* New translations: Arabic (ar), Bosnian (bs), Catalan (ca), Welsh (cy),
  Esperanto (eo), Interlingua (la), Latvian (lv) and many improvements
  to current translations

MacOSX: * OSX support for click-to-pay (bitcoin:) links * Fix GUI disappearing problem on MacOSX (issue #1522)

Linux/Unix: * Copy addresses to middle-mouse-button clipboard

Command-line options --------------------

* -walletnotify will call a command on receiving transactions that affect the wallet. * -alertnotify will call a command on receiving an alert from the network. * -par now takes a negative number, to leave a certain amount of cores free.

JSON-RPC API changes --------------------

* listunspent now lists account and address infromation. * getinfo now also returns the time adjustment estimated from your peers. * getpeerinfo now returns bytessent, bytesrecv and syncnode. * gettxoutsetinfo returns statistics about the unspent transaction output database. * gettxout returns information about a specific unspent transaction output.

Networking changes ------------------

* Significant changes to the networking code, reducing latency and memory consumption. * Avoid initial block download stalling. * Remove IRC seeding support. * Performance tweaks. * Added testnet DNS seeds.

Wallet compatibility/rescuing -----------------------------

* Cases where wallets cannot be opened in another version/installation should be reduced. * -salvagewallet now works for encrypted wallets.

Thanks to everybody who contributed to the 0.8.2 release! ---------------------------------------------------------

APerson241 Andrew Poelstra Calvin Owens Chuck LeDuc Díaz Colin Dean David Griffith David Serrano Eric Lombrozo Gavin Andresen Gregory Maxwell Jeff Garzik Jonas Schnelli Larry Gilbert Luke Dashjr Matt Corallo Michael Ford Mike Hearn Patrick Brown Peter Todd Philip Kaufmann Pieter Wuille Richard Schwab Roman Mindalev Scott Howard Tariq Bashir Wladimir J. van der Laan freewil gladoscc kjj2 mb300sd

On 5/10/2013 8:39 AM, Gavin Andresen wrote:

> Bitcoin-Qt version 0.8.2 release candidate 1 is now available from:
>    http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.2/test/
>

Testnet glitch, something broke...

Fired up 0.8.2rc, and .... where's the coins? Where's the blocks?

I get a new empty datadir/testnet3 subdirectory.

bitcoin-qt.exe -datadir=c:\testnet (with a testnet=1 bitcoin.conf file option in that directory) stored wallet/blocks/chainstate in the root with previous versions. Now the root datadir data is ignored (except the config file) and a new hierarchy was created in subdirectory [b]/testnet3[/b].

So what's happening?

This looks to be done by https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2605 ... after searching the code for the change and then finding the commit.

1 day from opened to committed, released six days later... no changelog.

The datadir previously worked as I expected with both bitcoin-qt and bitcoind interacting with no problems, when simply specifying a command-line datadir, so I don't see the bug.

I can see how the previous behavior might be dangerous if the config file was removed. I just did that, and there's a cool freakout where my testnet wallet balance looks like real BTC and Bitcoin tries to reorg 67662 blocks starting from the genesis block. After receiving real block 73354 per debug log, a nice unrecoverable crash:

"Assertion failed!" File: src/main.cpp Line 1745 Expression: pfork != NULL

This needs to be added to the changelog, since dropping in this binary will break testnet stuff if anybody is using Bitcoin this way for their testnet faucet, etc:

" * testnet data now stored in testnet3 subdirectory, enforced even when specifying datadir on command line (manually move your data first)"

On Sun, May 12, 2013 at 8:35 AM, Jay F <jayf@outlook•com> wrote:

> On 5/10/2013 8:39 AM, Gavin Andresen wrote:
> > Bitcoin-Qt version 0.8.2 release candidate 1 is now available from:
> >
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.8.2/test/
> >
>
> Testnet glitch, something broke...
>

I opened https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/2641 for this issue.