Prevent arbitrary files from being overwritten. There have been reports that users have overwritten wallet files this way. It may also avoid other security issues. Fixes #9934. Adds mention to release notes and adds a test.
3.7 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
Miner block size limiting deprecated
Though blockmaxweight has been preferred for limiting the size of blocks returned by getblocktemplate since 0.13.0, blockmaxsize remained as an option for those who wished to limit their block size directly. Using this option resulted in a few UI issues as well as non-optimal fee selection and ever-so-slightly worse performance, and has thus now been deprecated. Further, the blockmaxsize option is now used only to calculate an implied blockmaxweight, instead of limiting block size directly. Any miners who wish to limit their blocks by size, instead of by weight, will have to do so manually by removing transactions from their block template directly.
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.
Low-level RPC changes
-
The "currentblocksize" value in getmininginfo has been removed.
-
The deprecated RPC
getinfo
was removed. It is recommended that the more specific RPCs are used:getblockchaininfo
getnetworkinfo
getwalletinfo
getmininginfo
-
dumpwallet
no longer allows overwriting files. This is a security measure as well as prevents dangerous user mistakes.
Credits
Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:
As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.