bitcoin/doc/release-notes/release-notes-0.14.1.md

Bitcoin Core version 0.14.1 is now available from:

https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.14.1/

This is a new minor version release, including 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

Bitcoin Core is extensively tested on multiple operating systems using the Linux kernel, macOS 10.8+, and Windows Vista and later.

Microsoft ended support for Windows XP on April 8th, 2014, No attempt is made to prevent installing or running the software on Windows XP, you can still do so at your own risk but be aware that there are known instabilities and issues. Please do not report issues about Windows XP to the issue tracker.

Bitcoin Core should also work on most other Unix-like systems but is not frequently tested on them.

Notable changes

RPC changes

• The first positional argument of createrawtransaction was renamed from transactions to inputs.

• The argument of disconnectnode was renamed from node to address.

These interface changes break compatibility with 0.14.0, when the named arguments functionality, introduced in 0.14.0, is used. Client software using these calls with named arguments needs to be updated.

Mining

In previous versions, getblocktemplate required segwit support from downstream clients/miners once the feature activated on the network. In this version, it now supports non-segwit clients even after activation, by removing all segwit transactions from the returned block template. This allows non-segwit miners to continue functioning correctly even after segwit has activated.

Due to the limitations in previous versions, getblocktemplate also recommended non-segwit clients to not signal for the segwit version-bit. Since this is no longer an issue, getblocktemplate now always recommends signalling segwit for all miners. This is safe because ability to enforce the rule is the only required criteria for safe activation, not actually producing segwit-enabled blocks.

UTXO memory accounting

Memory usage for the UTXO cache is being calculated more accurately, so that the configured limit (-dbcache) will be respected when memory usage peaks during cache flushes. The memory accounting in prior releases is estimated to only account for half the actual peak utilization.

The default -dbcache has also been changed in this release to 450MiB. Users who currently set -dbcache to a high value (e.g. to keep the UTXO more fully cached in memory) should consider increasing this setting in order to achieve the same cache performance as prior releases. Users on low-memory systems (such as systems with 1GB or less) should consider specifying a lower value for this parameter.

Additional information relating to running on low-memory systems can be found here: reducing-bitcoind-memory-usage.md.

0.14.1 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 other APIs

• #10084 142fbb2 Rename first named arg of createrawtransaction (MarcoFalke)
• #10139 f15268d Remove auth cookie on shutdown (practicalswift)
• #10146 2fea10a Better error handling for submitblock (rawodb, gmaxwell)
• #10144 d947afc Prioritisetransaction wasn't always updating ancestor fee (sdaftuar)
• #10204 3c79602 Rename disconnectnode argument (jnewbery)

Block and transaction handling

• #10126 0b5e162 Compensate for memory peak at flush time (sipa)
• #9912 fc3d7db Optimize GetWitnessHash() for non-segwit transactions (sdaftuar)
• #10133 ab864d3 Clean up calculations of pcoinsTip memory usage (morcos)

P2P protocol and network code

• #9953/#10013 d2548a4 Fix shutdown hang with >= 8 -addnodes set (TheBlueMatt)
• #10176 30fa231 net: gracefully handle NodeId wrapping (theuni)

Build system

• #9973 e9611d1 depends: fix zlib build on osx (theuni)

GUI

• #10060 ddc2dd1 Ensure an item exists on the rpcconsole stack before adding (achow101)

Mining

• #9955/#10006 569596c Don't require segwit in getblocktemplate for segwit signalling or mining (sdaftuar)
• #9959/#10127 b5c3440 Prevent slowdown in CreateNewBlock on large mempools (sdaftuar)

Tests and QA

• #10157 55f641c Fix the mempool_packages.py test (sdaftuar)

Miscellaneous

• #10037 4d8e660 Trivial: Fix typo in help getrawtransaction RPC (keystrike)
• #10120 e4c9a90 util: Work around (virtual) memory exhaustion on 32-bit w/ glibc (laanwj)
• #10130 ecc5232 bitcoin-tx input verification (awemany, jnewbery)

Credits

Thanks to everyone who directly contributed to this release:

• Alex Morcos
• Andrew Chow
• Awemany
• Cory Fields
• Gregory Maxwell
• James Evans
• John Newbery
• MarcoFalke
• Matt Corallo
• Pieter Wuille
• practicalswift
• rawodb
• Suhas Daftuar
• Wladimir J. van der Laan

As well as everyone that helped translating on Transifex.