lbrycrd/doc/release-notes.md

(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.

Wallets directory configuration (-walletdir)

Bitcoin Core now has more flexibility in where the wallets directory can be located. Previously wallet database files were stored at the top level of the bitcoin data directory. The behavior is now:

• For new installations (where the data directory doesn't already exist), wallets will now be stored in a new wallets/ subdirectory inside the data directory by default.
• For existing nodes (where the data directory already exists), wallets will be stored in the data directory root by default. If a wallets/ subdirectory already exists in the data directory root, then wallets will be stored in the wallets/ subdirectory by default.
• The location of the wallets directory can be overridden by specifying a -walletdir=<path> option where <path> can be an absolute path or a relative path (relative to the current working directory). <path> can also be a path to symlink to a directory.

Care should be taken when choosing the wallets directory location, as if it becomes unavailable during operation, funds may be lost.

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.
• The wallet RPC addwitnessaddress was deprecated and will be removed in version 0.17, set the address_type argument of getnewaddress, or option -addresstype=[bech32|p2sh-segwit] instead.

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.