bitcoin/bitcoin — pull request #2632 by mikehearn (2013-05-08 15:55:41+00:00)
Title: Refactor chain-specific tweaks into a CChainParams class and introduce a regtest mode

Matt Corallo's bitcoind/bitcoinj comparison tool relies on a patch that sets difficulty to zero, thus ensuring blocks can be found instantly without any delay. It also drops the subsidy halving interval so that can be tested and makes a few other tweaks.

This series of patches creates a new CChainParams abstraction that hides various things that vary between main, test and regression test networks. It then adds a regtest mode triggered by the -regtest flag that disables external connections and uses the "insta-block" rule set. Also, the miner thread will shut down once it finds a block, meaning you can generate a single block from the command line on demand by running

./bitcoind -regtest setgenerate true

This change is incomplete - some things like DNS seeds, checkpoints and difficulty transition formulas aren't refactored out yet. However I wanted to get feedback on the approach before continuing, and the current code is useful even though there's still more refactoring to go.

Signed off by: Matt Corallo