Hello 👋 folks, I’m kevkevin. I’m an open-source developer and reporter for Insider Edition. Last week, I reviewed several pull requests from the Bitcoin Core repo.
Merged PR’s
Every week, several changes are officially added to Bitcoin Core. This week, 24 changes were merged. Here are some I thought were interesting from this week.
ci: add FreeBSD Clang cross job by fanquake
This is an alternative to another PR, which tried to add a native FreeBSD job but had issues with permissions and caching.
Overall, this change adds a new CI job adding a job named FreeBSD Cross. What Bitcoin Core gains from this change is more coverage across another type of system. That system is FreeBSD Cross.bitcoin-cli: Add -ipcconnect option by ryanofsky
This change was motivated by a comment by Sipa that suggested to allow the bitcoin-cli to connect to the node via IPC instead of TCP. This can be used if ENABLE_IPC is enabled and the node has been started with -ipcbind.
Adding this feature gives more flexibility for users of the bitcoin-cli because now they have more options on how they want to connect to their node.
In addition to this change, now bitcoin-cli prefers IPC over HTTP by default.index: handle case where pindex_prev equals chain tip in NextSyncBlock() by HowHsu
This change is a minimal improvement on when we return if the previous block tip is null. One thing I noticed in this change is that there was significant conversation for something that is mostly a refactor/code cleanup. While it is not completely a refactor and has a change to return early if pindex_prev == chain.Tip() in the NextSyncBlock function.
There was just some discussion around whether new tests should be added. Ultimately, there were no new tests added.
There are always changes being updated and reviewed in real-time. Here are some notable PR’s that are still up and looking for reviews.
cli: Return more helpful authentication errors by hodlinator
Increases precision of error messages to help the user correct authentication issues.
This adds a few useful responses
Failed to read cookie file and no rpcpassword was specified.
Cookie file was disabled via -norpccookiefile and no rpcpassword was specified.
Cookie file credentials were invalid and no rpcpassword was specified.
IRC meeting notes
Every week on Thursday, there is an IRC meeting. Here are some short notes from that meeting.
<abubakarsadiq> #topic Net Split WG Update (cfields)
<cfields> No update this week. Should have an incoming pr or two in the next few days for a LocalAddressManager.<abubakarsadiq> #topic Silent Payments WG Update (Novo__, theStack)
<theStack> no update, mostly awaiting review for the silentpayments module PR https://github.com/bitcoin-core/secp256k1/pull/1765<abubakarsadiq> #topic QML GUI WG Update (johnny9dev)
<johnny9dev> For qml. This last week i added a gui functional test to my legacy wallet migration flow PR and undrafted the PR. This test will use v28 to create a wallet to migrate. I also completed the Fee selection controls for picking a couple of standard targets or entering a custom fee.
<johnny9dev> epicleafies: can you give status?
<abubakarsadiq> theStack: I saw some update on the mailing list as well?
<johnny9dev> Not sure epicleafies is here but he has a bunch of PRs up for the qml. Some of the ones he worked on the last week was the desktop tray and the BIP321 integrations
<epicleafies> yeah, this past week I've created a pr for adding bip21 uri support and updating previous PRs
<johnny9dev> thanks
<theStack> abubakarsadiq: ah yes, that was a demonstration of the worst-case scanning attack on signet. wallets can use this to see if/how they are affected
<johnny9dev> I think with all of what we have in PR now we're down to 6 remaining tasks out of the original 21 list to get to feature parity
<johnny9dev> Address Book and Contacts Management, Receive Request History and BIP21 sharing, Replace-by-fee Speedup and Cancel, PSBT Import/Export, Sign/Verify message flow, External Signer/HWI
<johnny9dev> that is all for this week<abubakarsadiq> #topic Libevent removal (pinheadmz, fjahr)
<fjahr> Update from pinheadmz (not here today): This week I addressed review on #34905 and #34772 both have concept ACK and stale ACK so should be the home stretch then I’ll rebase the big daddy #32061 on those and incorporate new feedback there. Coverage results of libfuzzer and fuzzamoto are posted in the big PR, no crashes! I started on integration tests, first with lnd -- but there are already several non-http integration
16:12:37 <fjahr> issues between LND and core, from the buried taproot deployment and mempool policy changes in 29.1 (their CI is pinned at 29.0 today).
16:12:51 <fjahr> Update from me: Addressed some more feedback on #34158 but it also seems be getting close
16:13:01 <fjahr> That’s it from meReleases
None this week
Thank you for reading. Be sure to tune in again next week for your updates on Bitcoin Core!
If there are any comments, suggestions, or errors, do not hesitate to reach out or comment



