status-go/_assets/patches/geth/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.

Creating patches

Instructions for creating a patch from the command line:

1. Enter the command line at the status-im/go-ethereum repo root
2. Create the patch:
   1. If you already have a commit that represents the change, find its SHA1 (e.g. $COMMIT_SHA1) and do git diff $COMMIT_SHA1 > file.patch
   2. If the files are staged, do git diff --cached > file.patch

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/_assets/patches/geth/*.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