Release planning for 0.22.0-beta

[onyb]

Please find a draft of the release notes for the upcoming 0.22.0-beta version below.

Although there are a couple of issues remaining in the milestone, I don't think it's necessary to wait for them. But do let me know if you'd like a particular PR to be included in the release.

cc: @jcvernaleo @jakesyl @Roasbeef

Release notes

Protocol and network-related changes:

• Added support for witness tx and block in notfound msg. (btcd+netsync: support witness tx and block in notfound msg #1625)

• Added support for receiving sendaddrv2 messages from a peer. (Add support for receiving sendaddrv2 message from a peer #1670)

• Fixed bug in peer package causing last block height to go backwards. (peer: prevent last block height going backwards #1606)

• Added chain parameters for connecting to the public Signet network. (wire+chaincfg: add signet params #1692, chaincfg: fix deployment bit numbers #1718)

  Also added --signet command line flag to btcctl and btcd utilities.

Crypto changes:

• Fixed bug causing panic due to bad R and S signature components in btcec.RecoverCompact. (btcec: validate R and S signature components in RecoverCompact #1691)
• Set the name (secp256k1) in the CurveParams of the S256 curve. (btcec: set curve name in CurveParams #1565)

Notable developer-related package changes:

• Improve gc for txscript.IsUnspendable method. (Improve gc for isunspendable method #1615)

  Significantly reduced allocations, which should bring a performance gain during sync.

• Used RLock/RUnlock when possible in the addrmgr package. (addrmgr: Use RLock/RUnlock when possible #1697)

• Removed unknown block version warning in the blockchain package, due to false positives triggered by AsicBoost. (blockchain: remove unknown block version warning #1463)

• Added proper types for flag field and improve docs, for msgtx in the wire package. (wire: add proper types for flag field and improve docs #1632)

• Added chaincfg.RegisterHDKeyID function to populate HD key ID pairs. (chaincfg: Add RegisterHDKeyID func to populate HD key ID pairs #1617)

• Fixed flaky hash cache test due to resetting RNG. (txscript/hashcache_test: fix flake due to resetting RNG #1689)

• Added new method mining.AddWitnessCommitment to add the witness commitment as an OP_RETURN output within the coinbase transaction. (rpctest: add witness commitment when calling CreateBlock #1716)

RPC changes:

• Implemented Batch JSON-RPC in rpcclient and server. (Add Batch JSON-RPC support (rpc client & server) #1583)

  Please refer to rpcclient/examples/bitcoincorehttpbulk/README.md for examples.

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke getdescriptorinfo JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: Add getdescriptorinfo RPC call #1578)

• Updated the rpcserver handler for validateaddress JSON-RPC command to have parity with the bitcoind 0.20.0 interface. (rpcserver: add parity with bitcoind for validateaddress #1613)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke getblockfilter JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: Add getblockfilter JSON-RPC client command #1579)

• Implemented signmessagewithprivkey JSON-RPC command in rpcserver. (Implement signmessagewithprivkey JSON-RPC command (rpc server) #1585)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke importmulti JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: Add getblockfilter JSON-RPC client command #1579)

• Implemented watchOnly argument in rpcclient method to invoke listtransactions JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: support listtransactions RPC with watchonly argument #1628)

• Updated btcjson.ListTransactionsResult for compatibility with Bitcoin Core 0.20.0. (btcjson: update ListTransactionsResult for Bitcoin 0.20.0 #1626)

  Two new fields BlockHeight and Label were added as optional, to keep backwards compatibility.

• Implemented nullable optional JSON-RPC parameters. (Nullable optional JSON-RPC parameters #1594)

  Fixed command marshalling dropping params that follow params with nil value.

• Implemented rpcclient and server method to invoke getnodeaddresses JSON-RPC command. (Add getnodeaddresses JSON-RPC support (rpc client & server) #1590)

• Implemented rpcclient methods to invoke PSBT JSON-RPC commands. (btcjson,rpcclient: add support for PSBT commands to rpcclient #1596)

  The walletcreatefundedpsbt and walletprocesspsbt commands were implemented.

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke listsinceblock with the include_watchonly parameter enabled. (Added ListSinceBlockMinConfWatchOnly method. #1451)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke deriveaddresses JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: add deriveaddresses RPC command #1631)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke getblocktemplate JSON-RPC command. (GetBlockTemplate RPC client implementation #1629)

  The corresponding btcjson structs were also updated to reflect changes in Bitcoin Core.

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke getaddressinfo JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: implement getaddressinfo command #1633)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke getwalletinfo JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: implement getwalletinfo command #1638)

• Fixed error message in rpcserver when an unknown RPC command is encountered. (rpcserver: Fix Error message returned by processRequest #1695)

• Fixed error message returned by estimatefee when the number of blocks exceeds the max depth. (Fix error message returned by EstimateFee #1678)

• Updated btcjson.GetBlockChainInfoResult to include new fields in Bitcoin Core. (btcjson (client): Update fields in GetBlockChainInfoResult #1676)

  Two new fields InitialBlockDownload and SizeOnDisk were added.

• Added ExtraHeaders in rpcclient.ConnConfig struct. (rpcclient: add ExtraHeaders in ConnConfig #1669)

  It's useful when the RPC provider needs customized headers, for example, the X-Auth-Token header.

• Fixed bitcoind compatibility issue with the sendrawtransaction JSON-RPC command. (integration: optimize harness for better itest control, restore bitcoind compatibility #1659)

• Added new JSON-RPC errors to btcjson package, and documented them. (btcjson: add new JSON-RPC errors and document them #1648)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke createwallet JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: implement createwallet with functional options #1650)

  This is also the first rpcclient method that uses the functional options pattern, which will be used more and more in future.

• Implemented rpcclient methods to invoke backupwallet, dumpwallet, loadwallet and unloadwallet JSON-RPC commands. (rpcclient: add more wallet commands #1645)

• Fixed unmarshalling error in getmininginfo JSON-RPC command, for valid integers in scientific notation. (Fix getmininginfo unmarshal error #1644)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke gettxoutsetinfo JSON-RPC command. (rpcclient: implement gettxoutsetinfo command #1641)

• Implemented rpcclient method to invoke signrawtransactionwithwallet JSON-RPC command. (Add signrawtransactionwithwallet command interface #1642)

• Added txid to getblocktemplate response of rpcserver. (rpcserver: add txid to getblocktemplate response #1639)

• Fixed monetary unit used in createrawtransaction JSON-RPC command in rpcserver. (Fix monetary unit #1614)

• Added rawtx field to btcjson.GetBlockVerboseTxResult to provide backwards compatibility with older versions of Bitcoin Core. (Fixes btcsuite/btcd#1653 #1677)

Misc changes:

• Updated btcutil dependency. (build: update btcutil dependency #1704)
• Updated documentation links to use https://pkg.go.dev instead of http://godoc.org. (docs: update shields #1693)
• Added Dockerfile to build and run btcd on Docker. (Add Dockerfile to build and run btcd on Docker. #1465)
• Reworked documentation and published on https://btcd.readthedocs.io. (Heavy rework on documentation #1468)
• Added support for Go 1.15. (btcd: fix conversion of int to string failing in Go 1.15 #1619)
• Added Go 1.14 as the minimum supported version of Golang. (ci: add go 1.15 to tests #1621)
• Removed unnecessary GOMAXPROCS function calls. (Remove unnecessary GOMAXPROCS function calls #1627)
• Enabled Go Race detector and code coverage on GitHub Actions. (GitHub Actions: Enable Go Race detector and code coverage #1601)

[jcvernaleo]

Looks great to me. Unless there are some small ones that people think really need to go in, I think we can go for a release really soon based on this.

[jcvernaleo]

As discussed on irc, we are putting a hard date of one week from now (tuesday 04/20) for this release. Anything not in before then will have to be in the next release.

[fish-sammy]

Any update for the release? I need the SignRawTransactionWithWallet change for my project.

[jcvernaleo]

@sammy1991106 Sorry for the delay. I plan on pushing on this in our next weekly irc meeting to see if we can get the release out either this week or next at the latest.

[jcvernaleo]

I think this needs updating for the few extra PRs that have gone in since it was done.

[onyb]

@jcvernaleo Done!

[jcvernaleo]

@onyb Text looks good. Could you do a PR with this to update the CHANGES file with this? Once that is done I can do version PR and do the release.

[jcvernaleo]

Changes file in, now need:
#1724

[jcvernaleo]

This release was done, just forgot to close the issue.