One more step on the journey to reduce `BlockRef` usage across the
codebase - this one gets rid of `StateData` whose job was to keep track
of which block was last assigned to a state - these duties have now been
taken over by `latest_block_root`, a fairly recent addition that
computes this block root from state data (at a small cost that should be
insignificant)
99% mechanical change.
* fewer deps on `BlockRef` traversal in anticipation of pruning
* allows identifying EpochRef:s by their shuffling as a first step of
* tighten error handling around missing blocks
using the zero hash for signalling "missing block" is fragile and easy
to miss - with checkpoint sync now, and pruning in the future, missing
blocks become "normal".
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.
* ncli_db: add putState, putBlock
These tools allow modifying an existing nimbus database for the purpose
of recovery or reorg, moving the head, tail and genesis to arbitrary
points.
* remove potentially expensive `putState` in `BeaconStateDB`
* introduce `latest_block_root` which computes the root of the latest
applied block from the `latest_block_header` field (instead of passing
it in separately)
* avoid some unnecessary BeaconState copies during init
* discover https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/issues/19094
* prefer `HashedBeaconState` in a few places to avoid recomputing state
root
* fetch latest block root from state when creating blocks
* harden `get_beacon_proposer_index` against invalid slots and document
* move random spec function tests to `test_spec.nim`
* avoid unnecessary state root computation before block proposal
Jacek Sieka