v4.1.1.99-test

[Nikovash]

Crystal Bitoreum 4.1.1.99 Development Build - Public Test

⚠️ THIS IS A DEVELOPMENT BUILD ⚠️

This release is intended for testing and validation purposes only and should not be considered a production release.

This "release" serves as a public test build to help verify that core functionality has not been impacted by the extensive modernization work completed during the 4.1.1.99 development cycle.

A dedicated GitHub Discussion thread has been created for this build. All feedback, bug reports, testing results, comments, suggestions, and general observations are encouraged and appreciated.

Smartnode Operators

⛔ Please do NOT deploy this build on production Smartnodes, Exchanges, Pools, or other critical infrastructure. ⛔

While no intentional Smartnode, consensus, protocol, or blockchain changes have been introduced, this build is being treated as a public beta and has not received the same level of field testing as an official release.

Smartnodes are expected to function normally; however, until broader testing has been completed, operators should avoid deploying this version to production infrastructure.

If you choose to test this build, please do so in a non-critical environment and report any unexpected behavior through the GitHub Discussion thread.

Overview

Version 4.1.1.99 represents a major modernization milestone for Crystal Bitoreum and serves as a validation point for ongoing development efforts.

This build includes substantial work related to C++17 migration, cross-platform build modernization, GitHub Actions improvements, dependency maintenance, and long-term infrastructure planning.

Highlights

C++17 Migration Progress

• Significant progress toward full C++17 compatibility
• Updated build configuration for modern compiler toolchains
• Corrected multiple compatibility issues exposed by newer GCC and Clang releases
• Established a modern development baseline for future work

macOS Modernization

• Restored and validated macOS CI support
• Successful build validation targeting:
  • macOS 12 (Darwin 21)
  • macOS 13 (Darwin 22)
  • macOS 15 (Darwin 24)
• Updated workflows for modern Xcode and Clang environments
• Verified DMG generation and release packaging

Dependency Improvements

• Corrected multiple Qt 5.9.6 compatibility issues
• Resolved zlib preprocessing and patching issues
• Implemented Boost compatibility workarounds required by modern toolchains
• Improved overall build reliability across supported platforms

Continuous Integration

• Modernized GitHub Actions workflows
• Improved cross-platform validation
• Standardized macOS build targets
• Verified Linux, Windows, and macOS build generation

Development Goals

This release establishes the foundation for future work including:

• Complete C++17 migration review
• Boost dependency reduction and eventual replacement with native C++17 alternatives
• Native Apple Silicon (ARM64) support investigation
• Dash upstream modernization efforts
• LLMQ implementation review and enhancements
• Future Qt upgrade evaluation
• Broader ARM platform optimization

Compatibility

This development build does not intentionally introduce:

• Consensus changes
• Protocol changes
• Smartnode changes
• Blockchain compatibility changes

The focus of this release is modernization, infrastructure improvements, and long-term maintainability.

Notes

This pre-release is intended to serve as a public review checkpoint before integration into the primary development branch.
Feedback and testing results are welcome!

Bootstrap

The Bootstrap has exceeded GitHubs 2GB limit for the time we have uploaded a bootstrap.zip

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This discussion was created from the release v4.1.1.99-test.

[Nikovash]

Debian 13 (Trixie) Build Validation: Qt 5.9.6 xcb-util Compatibility Fix

Summary

While validating Crystal Bitoreum on a clean Debian 13 (Trixie) installation, the depends build failed during the Qt 5.9.6 build process.

The failure occurred within Qt's bundled xcb-util sources:

qtbase/src/3rdparty/xcb/xcb-util/atoms.c

Modern GCC versions used by Debian 13 reported:

error: implicit declaration of function 'vsnprintf'

Root Cause

The source file conditionally includes <stdio.h> only when HAVE_VASPRINTF is defined:

#ifdef HAVE_VASPRINTF
#define _GNU_SOURCE
#include <stdio.h>
#endif

However, when HAVE_VASPRINTF is not defined, the code still uses:

vsnprintf(...)

without including <stdio.h>.

Older toolchains appear to have tolerated this behavior, while newer GCC versions correctly treat the missing declaration as an error.

Fix Applied

A new Qt depends patch was added:

depends/patches/qt/fix_xcb_atoms_stdio_include.patch

The patch adds an unconditional include:

#include <xcb/xcb.h>
+#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdarg.h>

The patch was then added to:

depends/packages/qt.mk

Validation

After applying the patch:

• Qt 5.9.6 completed successfully.
• The entire depends build completed successfully on Debian 13.
• Packages were staged, cached, and copied into the target depends directory without further errors.

Notes

This issue appears to originate from the bundled xcb-util sources included with Qt 5.9.6 rather than Crystal Bitoreum itself.

The patch is intended as a compatibility fix for modern GCC toolchains and newer Linux distributions.
fix_xcb_atoms_stdio_include.patch

[Nikovash]

Build results for fix_xcb_atoms_stdio_include.patch

Current validation status:

Target	Status
Ubuntu 18.04 x86_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 18.04 x86_32	❌ Not Tested
Ubuntu 18.04 ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 18.04 ARM_32	❌ Not Tested
Ubuntu 20.04 Pi 4+ ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 22.04 Oracle Ampere ARM_64	✅ Passed
Windows / Ubuntu 18.04 cross-build x86_64	✅ Passed
Debian 12 x86_64	✅ Passed
Debian 13 / Trixie x86_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 22.04 x86_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 22.04 ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 24.04 x86_64	✅ Passed
Linux Mint 22.3 x86_64	✅ Passed
macOS 12 x86_64	✅ Passed
macOS 13 x86_64	✅ Passed
macOS 15 x86_64	✅ Passed

[Nikovash]

Result of this has been to push fix to branch Codex. Branch dev-a will remain locked and the main focus of these discoveries and fixes until July 6th. When this discussion becomes locked and v4.1.1.99-test is removed from releases and tags

[Nikovash]

Build compatibility note: GMP 6.2.1 and newer GCC

While testing the current 4.1.1.99 development branch on Arch Linux, I ran into a depends build failure at GMP 6.2.1.

The test environment was:

Arch Linux x86_64
GCC 16.1.1

The failure happened during GMP’s configure step:

checking compiler gcc ... no, long long reliability test 1
configure: error: could not find a working compiler, see config.log for details

The relevant config.log error was:

conftest.c:12:48: error: too many arguments to function 'g'; expected 0, have 6

This appears to be caused by newer GCC/default C behavior interacting poorly with GMP 6.2.1’s older configure sanity tests.

The fix tested was to pin GMP’s C standard in depends/packages/gmp.mk:

$(package)_cflags+=-std=gnu11

diff --git a/depends/packages/gmp.mk b/depends/packages/gmp.mk
 $(package)_config_opts+=--enable-cxx --enable-fat --with-pic --disable-shared
+$(package)_cflags+=-std=gnu11
 $(package)_cflags_armv7l_linux+=-march=armv7-a
 $(package)_cflags_aarch64_darwin+=-march=armv8-a

This is scoped only to GMP’s C build flags. It does not affect the main project C++ standard, Qt, Boost, or the ongoing C++17 modernization work.

Validation so far:

Arch Linux / GCC 16.1.1:
  depends build: PASS
  bitoreumd: PASS
  bitoreum-cli: PASS
  bitoreum-qt: PASS

Ubuntu 18.04 / GCC 7.5:
  Linux x86_64 build: PASS

I also tested -std=gnu17, but Ubuntu 18.04’s GCC 7.5 does not support it:

gcc: error: unrecognized command line option ‘-std=gnu17’; did you mean ‘-std=gnu11’?

Based on that, gnu11 looks like the safer compatibility choice. It fixes the newer GCC issue while preserving compatibility with older supported Linux build environments.

Unless further testing shows a problem on Windows/mingw or macOS, I plan to commit this as a small depends portability fix.

[Nikovash]

Build results for depends/packages/gmp.mk modification

Tested change:

$(package)_cflags+=-std=gnu11

Current validation status:

Target	Status
Arch Linux w/ gcc 16+ x86_64	✅ Passed
Debian 12 / Bookworm x86_64	✅ Passed
Debian 13 / Trixie x86_64	✅ Passed
Fedora 44 x86_64	✅ Passed
Linux Mint 22.3 x86_64	✅ Passed
macOS 12 x86_64	✅ Passed
macOS 13 x86_64	✅ Passed
macOS 15 x86_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 18.04 x86_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 18.04 x86_32	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 18.04 ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 18.04 ARM_32	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 20.04 Pi 4+ ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 22.04 Oracle Ampere ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 22.04 x86_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 22.04 ARM_64	✅ Passed
Ubuntu 24.04 x86_64	✅ Passed
Windows / Ubuntu 18.04 cross-build x86_64	✅ Passed

Pushed to branch Codex