I had some time to catch up with 2.1 today. Iām unable to reproduce the problem with the client hanging on the load screen on Windows 64, Ubuntu 32 or Ubuntu 64.
So to gather a list of the final user issues it was
- client freezing on ādone loadingā screen.
- slow syncing of blockchain on 2.1
Iām unable to reproduce the first issue, and it doesnāt appear that everyone is having the same issue. It could be due to local configuration or environmental. But it appears that once the data dir is cleared users are able to sync fine, so thereās a potential fix. Iām not really sure what to do about this. Given a clean environment the software operates as it should with the conversion and continuing to sync.
@sigmike has already explained the reasoning for the second issue. It shouldnāt be much of a problem though, as weāll be able to provide a bootstrap file through download or torrents. Meaning people can download the whole blockchain at the max speed their internet connection will allow. Then all the client has to do is verify its contents.
Other than those issues the proposed improvements have been confirmed by myself and others from the community. The RAM usaged is cut by almost 50% in most cases. The new database and blockchain conversion is working successfully. The bootstrap file works in helping to quickly download a large portion of the blockchain for the client to verify instead of downloading from peers. There are many little aesthetic improvements to the client and some added functionality (such as quick access to debug.log from the config menu.).
There are many changes in this release and Iām sure I was not able to test every little bit but, core functionality and targeted improvements for this release seem acceptable to me.
Given these results from my own testing, and feedback from the community I feel that moving forward with a 2.1 release would be okay at this point. @JordanLee and @sigmike, and the communities thoughts would be appreciated.
