status-go/geth-patches/README.md

Status Patches to for geth (go-ethereum)

---

Status-go uses go-ethereum (upstream) as its dependency. As any other Go dependency go-ethereum code is vendored and stored in vendor/ folder.

However, there are a few changes has been made to the upstream, that are specific to Status and should not be merged to the upstream. We keep those changes as a set of patches, that can be applied upon each next release of go-ethereum. Patched version of go-ethereum is available in the status-im/go-ethereum repo.

We try to minimize number and amount of changes in those patches as much as possible, and whereas possible, to contribute changes into the upstream.

Patches

• 0000-accounts-hd-keys.patch — adds support for HD extended keys (links/docs?)
• 0002-les-api-status.patch — adds StatusBackend into LES code (need to be inspected, some things can and should be done outside of les code
• 0003-dockerfiles-wnode-swarm.patch — adds Dockerfiles (who uses this?)
• 0004-whisper-notifications.patch — adds Whisper notifications (need to be reviewed and documented)
• 0006-latest-cht.patch – updates CHT root hashes, should be updated regularly to keep sync fast, until proper Trusted Checkpoint sync is not implemented as part of LES/2 protocol.
• 0007-README.patch — update upstream README.md.
• 0010-geth-17-fix-npe-in-filter-system.patch - Temp patch for 1.7.x to fix a NPE in the filter system.

Updating upstream version

When a new stable release of go-ethereum comes out, we need to upgrade our fork and vendored copy.

Note: The process is completely repeatable, so it's safe to remove current go-ethereum directory, clone latest upstream version and apply patches from scratch.

Using existing fork repo (recommended)

I. In our fork at /status-im/go-ethereum.

1. Remove the local develop branch.

git branch -D develop

2. Pull upstream release branch into develop branch.

git pull git@github.com:ethereum/go-ethereum.git <release_branch>:develop

In our case <release_branch> would be release/1.7 because the current stable version is 1.7.x.

3. Apply patches

for patch in $GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go/geth-patches/*.patch;
do
    patch -p1 < $patch;
done

Once patches applied, you might want to inspect changes between current vendored version and newly patched version by this command:

diff -Nru -x "*_test.go" -x "vendor" -x ".git" -x "tests" -x "build" --brief $GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/go-ethereum $GOPATH/src/github.com/status-im/status-go/vendor/github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum

4. Push develop branch to our remote, rewriting history

git push -f origin develop

II. In status-go repository

1. Update vendored go-ethereum (note that we use upstream's address there, we override the download link to our fork address in Gopkg.toml)

dep ensure --update github.com/ethereum/go-ethereum

Gopkg.lock will change and files within vendor/ethereum/go-ethereum.

2. Run tests

make ci

3. Commit & push changes, create a PR