This modifies the blockNode and BestState structs in the blockchain
package to store hashes directly instead of pointers to them and updates
callers to deal with the API change in the exported BestState struct.
In general, the preferred approach for hashes moving forward is to store
hash values in complex data structures, particularly those that will be
used for cache entries, and accept pointers to hashes in arguments to
functions.
Some of the reasoning behind making this change is:
- It is generally preferred to avoid storing pointers to data in cache
objects since doing so can easily lead to storing interior pointers
into other structs that then can't be GC'd
- Keeping the hash values directly in the block node provides better
cache locality
This commit adds all of the infrastructure needed to support BIP0009
soft forks.
The following is an overview of the changes:
- Add new configuration options to the chaincfg package which allows the
rule deployments to be defined per chain
- Implement code to calculate the threshold state as required by BIP0009
- Use threshold state caches that are stored to the database in order
to accelerate startup time
- Remove caches that are invalid due to definition changes in the
params including additions, deletions, and changes to existing
entries
- Detect and warn when a new unknown rule is about to activate or has
been activated in the block connection code
- Detect and warn when 50% of the last 100 blocks have unexpected
versions.
- Remove the latest block version from wire since it no longer applies
- Add a version parameter to the wire.NewBlockHeader function since the
default is no longer available
- Update the miner block template generation code to use the calculated
block version based on the currently defined rule deployments and
their threshold states as of the previous block
- Add tests for new error type
- Add tests for threshold state cache
