bitcoin/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.

Custom wallet directories

The ability to specify a directory other than the default data directory in which to store wallets has been added. An existing directory can be specified using the -walletdir=<dir> argument. Wallets loaded via -wallet arguments must be in this wallet directory. Care should be taken when choosing a wallet directory location, as if it becomes unavailable during operation, funds may be lost.

Default wallet directory change

On new installations (if the data directory doesn't exist), wallets will now be stored in a new wallets/ subdirectory inside the data directory. If this wallets/ subdirectory doesn't exist (i.e. on existing nodes), the current datadir root is used instead, as it was.

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.

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.

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.