Time in the beacon chain is expressed relative to the genesis time -
this PR creates a `beacon_time` module that collects helpers and
utilities for dealing the time units - the new module does not deal with
actual wall time (that's remains in `beacon_clock`).
Collecting the time related stuff in one place makes it easier to find,
avoids some circular imports and allows more easily identifying the code
actually needs wall time to operate.
* move genesis-time-related functionality into `spec/beacon_time`
* avoid using `chronos.Duration` for time differences - it does not
support negative values (such as when something happens earlier than it
should)
* saturate conversions between `FAR_FUTURE_XXX`, so as to avoid
overflows
* fix delay reporting in validator client so it uses the expected
deadline of the slot, not "closest wall slot"
* simplify looping over the slots of an epoch
* `compute_start_slot_at_epoch` -> `start_slot`
* `compute_epoch_at_slot` -> `epoch`
A follow-up PR will (likely) introduce saturating arithmetic for the
time units - this is merely code moves, renames and fixing of small
bugs.
* support downloading blocks / states via JSON in addition to SSZ -
slow, but needed for infura support - SSZ is still used when server
supports it
* use common forked block/state reader in REST API
* fix stack overflows in REST JSON decoder
* fix invalid serialization of `justification_bits` in
`/eth/v1/debug/beacon/states` and `/eth/v2/debug/beacon/states`
* fix REST client to use `/eth/...` instead of `/api/eth/...`, update
"default" urls to expose REST api via `/eth` as well as this is what the
standard says - `/api` was added early on based on an example "base url"
in the spec that has been removed since
* expose Nimbus REST extensions via `/nimbus` in addition to
`/api/nimbus` to stay consistent with `/eth`
* fix invalid state root when reading states via REST
* fix recursive imports in `spec/ssz_codec`
* remove usages of `serialization.useCustomSerialization` - fickle
* Support starting from altair
* hide `finalized-checkpoint-` - they are incomplete and usage may cause
crashes
* remove genesis detection code (broken, obsolete)
* enable starting ChainDAG from altair checkpoints - this is a
prerequisite for checkpoint sync (TODO: backfill)
* tighten checkpoint state conditions
* show error when starting from checkpoint with existing database (not
supported)
* print rest-compatible JSON in ncli/state_sim
* altair/merge support in ncli
* more altair/merge support in ncli_db
* pre-load header to speed up loading
* fix forked block decoding
Jacek Sieka