7.7 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/
Compatibility
Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on April 8th, 2014, an OS initially released in 2001. This means that not even critical security updates will be released anymore. Without security updates, using a bitcoin wallet on a XP machine is irresponsible at least.
In addition to that, with 0.12.x there have been varied reports of Bitcoin Core randomly crashing on Windows XP. It is not clear what the source of these crashes is, but it is likely that upstream libraries such as Qt are no longer being tested on XP.
We do not have time nor resources to provide support for an OS that is end-of-life. From 0.13.0 on, Windows XP is no longer supported. Users are suggested to upgrade to a newer verion of Windows, or install an alternative OS that is supported.
No attempt is made to prevent installing or running the software on Windows XP, you can still do so at your own risk, but do not expect it to work: do not report issues about Windows XP to the issue tracker.
Notable changes
Database cache memory increased
As a result of growth of the UTXO set, performance with the prior default database cache of 100 MiB has suffered. For this reason the default was changed to 300 MiB in this release.
For nodes on low-memory systems, the database cache can be changed back to 100 MiB (or to another value) by either:
- Adding
dbcache=100in bitcoin.conf - Changing it in the GUI under
Options → Size of database cache
Note that the database cache setting has the most performance impact during initial sync of a node, and when catching up after downtime.
bitcoin-cli: arguments privacy
The RPC command line client gained a new argument, -stdin
to read extra arguments from standard input, one per line until EOF/Ctrl-D.
For example:
$ echo -e "mysecretcode\n120" | src/bitcoin-cli -stdin walletpassphrase
It is recommended to use this for sensitive information such as wallet passphrases, as command-line arguments can usually be read from the process table by any user on the system.
RPC low-level changes
-
gettxoutsetinfoUTXO hash (hash_serialized) has changed. There was a divergence between 32-bit and 64-bit platforms, and the txids were missing in the hashed data. This has been fixed, but this means that the output will be different than from previous versions. -
Full UTF-8 support in the RPC API. Non-ASCII characters in, for example, wallet labels have always been malformed because they weren't taken into account properly in JSON RPC processing. This is no longer the case. This also affects the GUI debug console.
C++11 and Python 3
Various code modernizations have been done. The Bitcoin Core code base has started using C++11. This means that a C++11-capable compiler is now needed for building. Effectively this means GCC 4.7 or higher, or Clang 3.3 or higher.
When cross-compiling for a target that doesn't have C++11 libraries, configure with
./configure --enable-glibc-back-compat ... LDFLAGS=-static-libstdc++.
For running the functional tests in qa/rpc-tests, Python3.4 or higher is now
required.
Linux ARM builds
Due to popular request, Linux ARM builds have been added to the uploaded executables.
The following extra files can be found in the download directory or torrent:
bitcoin-${VERSION}-arm-linux-gnueabihf.tar.gz: Linux binaries for the most common 32-bit ARM architecture.bitcoin-${VERSION}-aarch64-linux-gnu.tar.gz: Linux binaries for the most common 64-bit ARM architecture.
ARM builds are still experimental. If you have problems on a certain device or Linux distribution combination please report them on the bug tracker, it may be possible to resolve them.
Note that Android is not considered ARM Linux in this context. The executables are not expected to work out of the box on Android.
0.13.0 Change log
Detailed release notes follow. This overview includes changes that affect behavior, not code moves, refactors and string updates. For convenience in locating the code changes and accompanying discussion, both the pull request and git merge commit are mentioned.
RPC and REST
Asm script outputs replacements for OP_NOP2 and OP_NOP3
OP_NOP2 has been renamed to OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY by BIP 65
OP_NOP3 has been renamed to OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY by BIP 112
The following outputs are affected by this change:
- RPC
getrawtransaction(in verbose mode) - RPC
decoderawtransaction - RPC
decodescript - REST
/rest/tx/(JSON format) - REST
/rest/block/(JSON format when including extended tx details) bitcoin-tx -json
New mempool information RPC calls
RPC calls have been added to output detailed statistics for individual mempool
entries, as well as to calculate the in-mempool ancestors or descendants of a
transaction: see getmempoolentry, getmempoolancestors, getmempooldescendants.
ZMQ
Each ZMQ notification now contains an up-counting sequence number that allows listeners to detect lost notifications. The sequence number is always the last element in a multi-part ZMQ notification and therefore backward compatible. Each message type has its own counter. (https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/7762)
Configuration and command-line options
Block and transaction handling
P2P protocol and network code
The p2p alert system has been removed in #7692 and the 'alert' message is no longer supported.
Fee filtering of invs (BIP 133)
The optional new p2p message "feefilter" is implemented and the protocol version is bumped to 70013. Upon receiving a feefilter message from a peer, a node will not send invs for any transactions which do not meet the filter feerate. BIP 133
Validation
Build system
Wallet
Hierarchical Deterministic Key Generation
Newly created wallets will use hierarchical deterministic key generation according to BIP32 (keypath m/0'/0'/k'). Existing wallets will still use traditional key generation.
Backups of HD wallets, regardless of when they have been created, can therefore be used to re-generate all possible private keys, even the ones which haven't already been generated during the time of the backup.
HD key generation for new wallets can be disabled by -usehd=0. Keep in
mind that this flag only has affect on newly created wallets.
You can't disable HD key generation once you have created a HD wallet.
There is no distinction between internal (change) and external keys.