Bitcoin-Qt version 0.7.2 released
14 December 2012

Bitcoin-Qt version 0.7.2 is now available from: https://sourceforge.net/projects/bitcoin/files/Bitcoin/bitcoin-0.7.2

This is a bug-fix minor release.

Please report bugs using the issue tracker at GitHub.

How to Upgrade

If you are running an older version, shut it down. Wait until it has completely shut down (which might take a few minutes for older versions), then run the installer (on Windows) or just copy over /Applications/Bitcoin-Qt (on Mac) or bitcoind/bitcoin-qt (on Linux).

If you were running on Linux with a version that might have been compiled with a different version of Berkeley DB (for example, if you were using an Ubuntu PPA version), then run the old version again with the -detachdb argument and shut it down; if you do not, then the new version will not be able to read the database files and will exit with an error.

Explanation of -detachdb (and the new “stop true” RPC command): The Berkeley DB database library stores data in both “.dat” and “log” files, so the database is always in a consistent state, even in case of power failure or other sudden shutdown. The format of the “.dat” files is portable between different versions of Berkeley DB, but the “log” files are not– even minor version differences may have incompatible “log” files. The -detachdb option moves any pending changes from the “log” files to the “blkindex.dat” file for maximum compatibility, but makes shutdown much slower. Note that the “wallet.dat” file is always detached, and versions prior to 0.6.0 detached all databases at shutdown.

Bug fixes

• Prevent RPC move from deadlocking. This was caused by trying to lock the database twice.

• Fix use-after-free problems in initialization and shutdown, the latter of which caused Bitcoin-Qt to crash on Windows when exiting.

• Correct library linking so building on Windows natively works.

• Avoid a race condition and out-of-bounds read in block creation/mining code.

• Improve platform compatibility quirks, including fix for 100% CPU utilization on FreeBSD 9.

• A few minor corrections to error handling, and updated translations.

• OSX 10.5 supported again

Thanks to everybody who contributed to this release:

• Alex
• dansmith
• Gavin Andresen
• Gregory Maxwell
• Jeff Garzik
• Luke Dashjr
• Philip Kaufmann
• Pieter Wuille
• Wladimir J. van der Laan
• grimd34th