* re-shuffled Clique functions
why:
Due to the port from the go-sources, the interface logic is not optimal
for nimbus. The main visible function is currently snapshot() and most
of the _procurement_ of this function result has been moved to a
sub-directory.
* run eip-225 Clique test against p2p/chain.persistBlocks()
why:
Previously, loading the test block chains was fugdged with the purpose
only to fill the database. As it is now clear how nimbus works on
Goerli, the same can be achieved with a more realistic scenario.
details:
Eventually these tests will be pre-cursor to the reply tests for the
Goerli chain supporting TDD approach with more simple cases.
* fix exception annotations for executor module
why:
needed for exception tracking
details:
main annoyance are vmState methods (in state.nim) which potentially
throw a base level Exception (a proc would only throws CatchableError)
* split p2p/chain into sub-modules and fix exception annotations
why:
make space for implementing PoA stuff
* provide over-loadable Clique PRNG
why:
There is a PRNG provided for generating reproducible number sequences.
The functions which employ the PRNG to generate time slots were ported
ported from the go-implementation. They are currently unused.
* implement trusted signer assembly in p2p/chain.persistBlocks()
details:
* PoA processing moved there at the end of a transaction. Currently,
there is no action (eg. transaction rollback) if this fails.
* The unit tests with staged blocks work ok. In particular, there should
be tests with to-be-rejected blocks.
* TODO: 1.Optimise throughput/cache handling; 2.Verify headers
* fix statement cast in pool.nim
* added table features to LRU cache
why:
Clique uses the LRU cache using a mixture of volatile online items
from the LRU cache and database checkpoints for hard synchronisation.
For performance, Clique needs more table like features.
details:
First, last, and query key added, as well as efficient random delete
added. Also key-item pair iterator added for debugging.
* re-factored LRU snapshot caching
why:
Caching was sub-optimal (aka. bonkers) in that it skipped over memory
caches in many cases and so mostly rebuild the snapshot from the
last on-disk checkpoint.
details;
The LRU snapshot toValue() handler has been moved into the module
clique_snapshot. This is for the fact that toValue() is not supposed
to see the whole LRU cache database. So there must be a higher layer
working with the the whole LRU cache and the on-disk checkpoint
database.
also:
some clean up
todo:
The code still assumes that the block headers are valid in itself. This
is particular important when an epoch header (aka re-sync header) is
processed as it must contain the PoA result of all previous headers.
So blocks need to be verified when they come in before used for PoA
processing.
* fix some snapshot cache fringe cases
why:
Must not index empty sequences in clique_snapshot module
why:
previously, table data were stored with the table iterator. while
loading a table with permuted entries will always reconstruct equivalent
tables (in the sense of `==`), serialisation data are not comparable.
this patch produces always the same serialised data for equivalent
tables.
why:
source-local unit tests would hardly be triggered by github CI as rightly
criticised with the last patch.
details:
source-local unit tests have been moved to tests folder.
this version also contains rlp serialisation code so rlp encode/decode
will apply tranparently. this is not needed in p2p/validate but will be
useful with the clique protocol.
Jordan Hrycaj