The new class is accessed via the Params() method and holds
most things that vary between main, test and regtest networks.
The regtest mode has two purposes, one is to run the
bitcoind/bitcoinj comparison tool which compares two separate
implementations of the Bitcoin protocol looking for divergence.
The other is that when run, you get a local node which can mine
a single block instantly, which is highly convenient for testing
apps during development as there's no need to wait 10 minutes for
a block on the testnet.
Remove the pnext pointer in CBlockIndex, and replace it with a
vBlockIndexByHeight vector (no effect on memory usage). pnext can
now be replaced by vBlockIndexByHeight[nHeight+1], but
FindBlockByHeight becomes constant-time.
This also means the entire mapBlockIndex structure and the block
index entries in it become purely blocktree-related data, and
independent from the currently active chain, potentially allowing
them to be protected by separate mutexes in the future.
Every block index entry currently requires a separately-allocated
CBigNum. By replacing them with uint256, it's just 32 bytes extra
in CBlockIndex itself.
This should save us a few megabytes in RAM, and less allocation
overhead.
Mike Hearn