pre-release-notes.md

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base	Pre-release notes

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Pre-release notes

These versions are not yet released. For official releases, see the release notes.

Version 0.17 beta 1

See the preliminary API documentation.

Breaking changes:

• Moved TorUtils to core.internal.

New feature:

• Gradle up to 8.10 is now supported

Version 0.17 alpha 5

See the preliminary API documentation.

Bugfix:

• Properly fixes the bug that prevents blockchain sync of mainnet blocks 849,138 and beyond:
  • As a quick fix, the current 12 chain work bytes have been made unsigned, to make use of an additional bit
  • Checkpoint records (as consumed by CheckpointManager can now use 32 bytes for chain work, and need to as soon as 12 bytes are exhausted
  • SPVBlockStore creates (and automatically migrates existing stores to) a new V2 format that uses 32 bytes for chain work

Breaking change:

• Rename some of the new java.time-based methods back to getters

Various:

• In wallet.proto, rename ENCRYPTED_SCRYPT_AES to just ENCRYPTED
• Improvements to ForwardingService

Version 0.17 alpha 4

See the preliminary API documentation.

This release mostly has small fixes, documentation updates and dependency updates.

New feature:

• Methods BitcoinNetwork.isValidAddress(Address) and .checkAddress(Address) to validate Bitcoin addresses
• New service bits Services.NODE_P2P_V2 and .NODE_COMPACT_FILTERS

Version 0.17 alpha 3

See the preliminary API documentation.

New feature:

• reproducible reference build, see build.Containerfile
• OpenJDK 21 is now supported
• Gradle up to 8.5 is now supported
• WalletTool: new --filter option for setting type of filter used
• BlockImporter: support signet and regtest

Bugfix:

• PBKDF2SHA512: set hLen to correct value of 64
• some symbols removed in previous alphas have been re-added as deprecated

Breaking changes:

• various fields have been made private in our quest to make more classes immutable
• protobuf:
  • moved protobufs to org.bitcoinj.protobuf.* packages
  • changed class generation into build directory, not under version control
• CoinSelector: new static constructor fromPredicate()
• TransactionInput/TransactionOutput/TransactionWitness/PartialMerkleTree: rename method messageSize() from getMessageSize()
• BlockLocator: migrate from native to static constructor ofBlocks()
• BlockFileLoader:
  • cannot be used directly as Iterator any more, call .iterator() first
  • added .stream() and .streamBuffers() to stream blocks
• FilteringCoinSelector: require list of TransactionOutPoint to be passed to the constructor
• PeerGroup, FilterMerger: deprecate setting false-positive rate
• TorUtils: new utility for Tor/Onion addresses

Feature removals:

• ECKey: remove native interface to libsecp256k1
• WalletTool: removed validation mode option

Version 0.17 alpha 2

See the preliminary API documentation.

• Message hierarchy refactoring:
  • extract interface and add BaseMessage abstract class
  • those classes are now immutable, got rid of caching
  • many constructors have been migrated to static constructors
  • constructors don't take NetworkParameters or MessageSerializer any more
  • got rid of the concept of parent/child messages; removed ChildMessage from the hierarchy and made previous child messages extend Message directly
  • TransactionOutPoint, TransactionInput, TransactionOutput, PartialMerkleTree, PeerAddress are not descendants of Message anymore (and made immutable)
• Transaction:
  • new coinbase() static helpers for coinbase transactions
  • make allowWitness() static
  • removed toHexString()
  • moved isMature() to Wallet.isTransactionMature()
  • made verify() a static helper method
• Block:
  • log warning if solve() runs a bit long
  • made verify*() static helper methods
• VersionMessage:
  • requires extended version handshake messages
  • deprecated isPingPongSupported() and ProtocolVersion.PONG
  • moved isBloomFilteringSupported() to Peer
  • removed field fromAddr; it's always filled up with zeros
  • field receivingAddress now takes InetSocketAddress and Services
  • dropped support for TORv2 messages; use TORv3
• Script:
  • new static constructors parse() and of()
  • made more immutable
• Services: wrapper for node services bitfield; use this in favor of the helpers in VersionMessage
• Buffers: new utils class for common operations on P2P message ByteBuffer
• ProtocolVersion: move to top-level class from NetworkParameters
• BitcoinURI:
  • the check against maxMoney has been removed
  • the check for negative amounts now throws OptionalFieldValidationException
• PaymentSession: doesn't validate the network of transactions in payment message any more; it's up to the caller to not mix networks
• MarriedKeyChain: removed the entire concept of married key chains
• AddressParser: simpler address parsing by making it a @FunctionalInterface
• Stopwatch: re-introduce tool for measuring time mainly for log messages
• many APIs that used NetworkParameters now use Network; we're providing deprecation stubs where possible
• again, many routines have been rewritten to use functional Java
• again, many fields and even entire classes have been made immutable

Notable fixes:

• Wallet: always enforce OP_RETURN limit in completeTx()
• Wallet: properly handle unconnected request inputs in completeTx()

Version 0.17 alpha 1

See the preliminary API documentation.

Requirements for developers and consumers:

• JDK 11+ is required for building the project. In particular, we support LTS releases JDK 11 and JDK 17.
• The Gradle requirement moderately updated: 4.4+ for everything except: bitcoinj-wallettemplate: 4.10+, bitcoinj-integration-test: 4.6+. If you want to use the new testOnJdk8 task, Gradle 6.7+ is required.
• The Java API requirement for bitcoinj-core remains unchanged at Java 8. For any other module it has been raised to Java 11.
• The Android API requirement for bitcoinj-core has been raised to API level 26 (Android 8.0).
• Unchanged is the possibility to use up to Java 8 language features (except bitcoinj-wallettemplate: Java 11).

Breaking changes:

• A considerable number of previously deprecated methods and classes have been removed. If you want to ease the migration to bitcoinj 0.17, please migrate usages of deprecated API before updating your bitcoinj dependency.

• We moved many classes to two new packages:

  • org.bitcoinj.base: provides fundamental types with minimal dependencies. This will become its own module in bitcoinj 0.18.
  • org.bitcoinj.crypto: we've removed direct usage of BouncyCastle in our crypo API. If you've been using BC KeyParameters to encrypt wallets, please use our very similar AesKey wrapper.

  In general, an "optimize imports" should be enough to resolve the new packages. Many method signatures have changed though. We tried to provide deprecation stubs for the old signatures to ease the migration.

• We're extracting many aspects of NetworkParameters to a new Network interface and its implementing BitcoinNetwork enum. Many APIs that used NetworkParameters now use Network. Again, we're providing deprecation stubs.

• We're not using the term "prod" (or "prodnet") any more. It's now BitcoinNetwork.MAINNET.

• We moved many internal helpers/utils to .internal packages. These are not public API, please don't use them from your app. If there is a helper which you think would be useful for everyone, please drop us a note and we'll consider adding it to the public API.

• We removed the (semi-automatic) upgrade path from basic to deterministic keychains/wallets. It was useful back in the time, but nowadays it's becoming difficult to maintain code for unexpected behaviour. For more information see this issue.

• We finally removed all Serializable and Cloneable!

• PrefixedChecksummedBytes has been renamed to EncodedPrivateKey.

• Constructors in the Message hierarchy previously taking a byte[] message payload are now consuming from ByteBuffer. There are no deprecation stubs provided for this change. Payloads are now never retained.

• If you've been using PeerDataEventListener to observe the blockchain download, use BlockchainDownloadEventListener now.

Feature removals:

• HttpDiscovery, implementing the protocol to discover seeds via HTTP, is no more. We suggest to use DnsDiscovery or use a hardcoded "seed node" (see new feature below).
• Removed support for querying Bitcoin XT nodes for UTXOs. GetUTXOsMessage and UTXOsMessage were removed.
• All database-backed block stores have been removed.
• The C++/JNI wallet interface has been deprecated and will be removed in a future release. For more information see this issue.
• Likewise, the native interface to libsecp256k1 has been deprecated. For more information see this issue.
• Setting tags on objects (TaggableObject) has been deprecated and will go away in a future release.
• On Android, LinuxSecureRandom isn't automatically installed anymore. The class is still around for manual installation if you're supporting Android 4.x affected by the RNG vulnerability.

New noteworthy features:

• PeerGroup can now add addresses discovered via addr and addrv2 messages to the pool of nodes to connect to. This means one or more hardcoded nodes can act as a seed for others. This means you can run realistically run a PeerGroup without any PeerDiscovery at all.
• Support for Signet.
• Transaction.addSignedInput() now also support segwit.
• Wallet has two new static constructors to load from file: loadFromFile(), loadFromFileStream()
• KeyChainGroupStructure now also supports a BIP-43/BIP-44/BIP-84 structure.
• We now have an AddressParser, which replaces the previous static Address.fromString() constructors.
• ECKey can now sign and verify messages with segwit addresses (BIP-137). There is a new MessageVerifyUtils to aid with signing and verifying messages.

General improvements:

• We're going all-in on Java 8 language features! Lambdas, method references, you name it! Generally speaking, we're on a quest to adopt functional programming style.
• In the API and internally, all integer timestamps have been replaced with java.time.Instant.
• Likewise, integer-based intervals now use java.time.Duration.
• Transaction lock time values are wrapped in a new class LockTime.
• Accessors that could previously return null are being migrated to java.util.Optional.
• In value-based/immutable classes we're in the process of stripping the prefix "get" from the accessor names.
• All usages of Guava ListenableFuture have been migrated to CompletableFuture. To ease the migration, we use ListenableCompletableFuture which implements both.
• We're on a mission to replace Guava with JDK 7+ equivalents. Our new org.bitcoinj.base package is not depending on Guava at all!
• WalletTool is slowly evolving into a standalone tool:
  • It now lives in its own bitcoinj-wallettool submodule.
  • Its build generates man, html5 and adoc manpages from the picocli annotations.
• We updated the DNS seeds.
• We refreshed the bundled checkpoints.
• We're now using SLF4J 2.0 with its fluent logging API.
• Our integration tests have moved to a new submodule bitcoinj-integration-test. It makes early use of JUnit 5 and requires Gradle 4.6+ because of that.
• Our CI has improved a lot:
  • On GitHub Actions, we're testing a large matrix of supported and future operating systems, JDKs and versions of Gradle. We're also testing for accidental usage of API only available past JDK 8. A new testOnJdk8 task has been added for this (requires Gradle 6.7+).
  • On Gitlab CI, the focus is on testing compatibility with an "all free software" toolchain (Debian) and reproducible builds.
• We now have a Matrix space! Join us there if you've got questions or suggestions.