why:
Clique relies on the even/odd position of an address after sorting. For
address generation, the Nim PRNG was used which seems to have changed
with Nim 1.6.11 (Linux, Windoes only.)
As a replace, the Posix.1-2001 example (two-liner calculation) generator
is used.
* Provide PoA voting header generator
why:
Handy for hive/smoke test
details:
Header generator is a re-implementation of the generator previously
used for the canonical reference tests.
* try fixing ci out-of-mem condition
why:
for some reason, the ci began behaving like a real win7/i386 machine
where gcc is limited to 64k optimiser space
* fix comments, typos ..
* Provide API
details:
API is bundled via clique.nim.
* Set extraValidation as default for PoA chains
why:
This triggers consensus verification and an update of the list
of authorised signers. These signers are integral part of the
PoA block chain.
todo:
Option argument to control validation for the nimbus binary.
* Fix snapshot state block number
why:
Using sub-sequence here, so the len() function was wrong.
* Optional start where block verification begins
why:
Can speed up time building loading initial parts of block chain. For
PoA, this allows to prove & test that authorised signers can be
(correctly) calculated starting at any point on the block chain.
todo:
On Goerli around blocks #193537..#197568, processing time increases
disproportionally -- needs to be understand
* For Clique test, get old grouping back (7 transactions per log entry)
why:
Forgot to change back after troubleshooting
* Fix field/function/module-name misunderstanding
why:
Make compilation work
* Use eth_types.blockHash() rather than utils.hash() in Clique modules
why:
Prefer lib module
* Dissolve snapshot_misc.nim
details:
.. into clique_verify.nim (the other source file clique_unused.nim
is inactive)
* Hide unused AsyncLock in Clique descriptor
details:
Unused here but was part of the Go reference implementation
* Remove fakeDiff flag from Clique descriptor
details:
This flag was a kludge in the Go reference implementation used for the
canonical tests. The tests have been adapted so there is no need for
the fakeDiff flag and its implementation.
* Not observing minimum distance from epoch sync point
why:
For compiling PoA state, the go implementation will walk back to the
epoch header with at least 90000 blocks apart from the current header
in the absence of other synchronisation points.
Here just the nearest epoch header is used. The assumption is that all
the checkpoints before have been vetted already regardless of the
current branch.
details:
The behaviour of using the nearest vs the minimum distance epoch is
controlled by a flag and can be changed at run time.
* Analysing processing time (patch adds some debugging/visualisation support)
why:
At the first half million blocks of the Goerli replay, blocks on the
interval #194854..#196224 take exceptionally long to process, but not
due to PoA processing.
details:
It turns out that much time is spent in p2p/excecutor.processBlock()
where the elapsed transaction execution time is significantly greater
for many of these blocks.
Between the 1371 blocks #194854..#196224 there are 223 blocks with more
than 1/2 seconds execution time whereas there are only 4 such blocks
before and 13 such after this range up to #504192.
* fix debugging symbol in clique_desc (causes CI failing)
* Fixing canonical reference tests
why:
Two errors were introduced earlier but ovelooked:
1. "Remove fakeDiff flag .." patch was incomplete
2. "Not observing minimum distance .." introduced problem w/tests 23/24
details:
Fixing 2. needed to revert the behaviour by setting the
applySnapsMinBacklog flag for the Clique descriptor. Also a new
test was added to lock the new behaviour.
* Remove cruft
why:
Clique/PoA processing was intended to take place somewhere in
executor/process_block.processBlock() but was decided later to run
from chain/persist_block.persistBlock() instead.
* Update API comment
* ditto
why:
some handy features were intended to support the unit test from
the clique/clique_test.go source (the other one is from
clique/snapshot_test.go.)
as this test cannot realistically be implemented without the full
api (includes mining support), it is left as that
Jordan Hrycaj
jangko