Planetmint

Changed

To resolve [issue 2279](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/issues/2279), we made some changes to the `bigchaindb-abci` package (which is our fork of `py-abci`) and told Planetmint to use the new version (`bigchaindb-abci==0.4.5`). [Pull request #2281](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2281).

Changed

The Kubernetes liveness probe for the Planetmint StatefulSet was improved to check the Tendermint /status endpoint in addition to the Tendermint /abci_info endpoint. [Pull request 2275](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2275)

Fixed

[Pull request 2270](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2270) resolved [issue #2269](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/issues/2269).

Notes

There's a new [page in the docs about storing files in Planetmint](https://docs.planetmint.com/en/latest/store-files.html). [Pull request #2259](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2259)

Changed

* Upgraded Planetmint Server code to use the latest version of Tendermint: version 0.19.2. Pull requests [2249](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2249), [#2252](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2252) and [#2253](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2253)
* Made some fixes to `py-abci` (an external Python package) and used our fixed version with Planetmint. Those fixes resolved several known issues, including [issue 2182](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/issues/2182) and issues with large transactions in general. Note: At the time of writing, our fixes to `py-abci` hadn't been merged into the main `py-abci` repository or its latest release on PyPI; we were using our own special `bigchaindb-abci` package (which included our fixes). Pull requests [#2250](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2250) and [#2261](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2261)
* If Planetmint Server crashes and then comes back, Tendermint Core doesn't try to reconnect to it. That's just how Tendermint Core works. We revised our Kubernetes-based production deployment template to resolve that issue: Planetmint Server and Tendermint Core are now in the same Kubernetes StatefulSet; if the connection between them ever goes down, then Kubernetes restarts the whole StatefulSet. [Pull request 2242](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2242)

Fixed

Re-enabled multi-threading. [Pull request 2258](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2258)

Known Issues

Tendermint changed how it responds to a request to store data (via the [Tendermint Broadcast API](https://tendermint.com/docs/tendermint-core/using-tendermint.html#broadcast-api)) between version 0.12 and 0.19.2. We started modifying the code of Planetmint Server to account for those changes in responses (in [pull request 2239](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2239)), but we found that there's a difference between what the Tendermint documentation _says_ about those responses and how Tendermint actually responds. We need to determine Tendermint's intent before we can finalize that pull request.

Notes

We were focused on getting the public Planetmint Testnet stable during the development of Planetmint 2.0 Alpha 3, and we think we largely succeeded. Because of that focus, we delayed the deployment of an internal test network until later. It would have had the same instabilities as the public Planetmint Testnet anyway. In the future, we'll always test a new version of Planetmint on our internal test network before deploying it on the public Planetmint Testnet. (That wasn't possible this time around, because there was no old/stable version of Planetmint 2.n to run on the public Planetmint Testnet while we tested Planetmint 2.[n+1] internally.)

Added

An implementation of [BEP-8 (Planetmint Enhancement Proposal 8)](https://github.com/planetmint/BEPs/tree/master/8), which makes sure a node can recover from a system fault (e.g. a crash) into a consistent state, i.e. a state where the data in the node's local MongoDB database is consistent with the data stored in the blockchain. Pull requests [#2135](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2135) and [#2207](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2207)

Changed

When someone uses the HTTP API to send a new transaction to a Planetmint network using the [POST /api/v1/transactions?mode={mode}](https://docs.planetmint.com/projects/server/en/master/http-client-server-api.html#post--api-v1-transactions?mode=mode) endpoint, they now get back a more informative HTTP response, so they can better-understand what happened. This is only when mode is `commit` or `sync`, because `async` _means_ that the response is immediate, without waiting to see what happened to the transaction. [Pull request 2198](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/2198)

Known Issues

* If Planetmint Server crashes and then is restarted, Tendermint Core won't try to reconnect to Planetmint Server and so all operations requiring that connection won't work. We only understood this recently. We'll write a blog post explaining what we intend to do about it.
* The known issues in 2.0 Alpha (listed below) are still there.

There were _many_ changes between 1.3 and 2.0 Alpha, too many to list here. We wrote a series of blog posts to summarize most changes, especially those that affect end users and application developers:

* [Planetmint 2.0 is Byzantine Fault Tolerant](https://blog.planetmint.com/planetmint-2-0-is-byzantine-fault-tolerant-5ffdac96bc44)
* [Some HTTP API Changes in the Next Release](https://blog.planetmint.com/some-http-api-changes-in-the-next-release-49612a537b0c)
* [Three Transaction Model Changes in the Next Release](https://blog.planetmint.com/three-transaction-model-changes-in-the-next-release-dadbac50094a)
* [Changes to the Server Command Line Interface in Planetmint 2.0](https://blog.planetmint.com/changes-to-the-server-command-line-interface-in-planetmint-2-0-e1d6576e7155)
* _A forthcoming post about changes in Planetmint Server configuration settings_

External Contributors

* r7vme contributed [pull request 1984](https://github.com/planetmint/planetmint/pull/1984) which fixed a bug in our Kubernetes-based production deployment template.

Known Issues

We intend to resolve these issues before releasing the final Planetmint 2.0:

* There's a known Heisenbug that (sometimes) arises and we found that making the Planetmint webserver single-threaded prevents that bug from causing problems. We intend to resolve that bug, but in the meantime our temporary workaround is to change the _default_ webserver configuration settings to single-threaded mode, i.e. `PLANETMINT_SERVER_WORKERS=1` and `PLANETMINT_SERVER_THREADS=1`.
* Issues sometimes happen when a large transaction is sent to a Planetmint network.

* **fixed** fixed voting/election backward compatibility issue (using planetmint-transactions >= 0.7.0)