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Patch Management

Bitcoin Knots maintains a large collection of patches on top of Bitcoin Core. Understanding how these are managed helps with contribution and debugging.

Branch Structure​

29.x-knots (main development branch)
    │
    ├── Merges from upstream (bitcoin/bitcoin v29.x)
    │
    └── Merges from patch branches:
        ├── dustdynamic-29.1+knots
        ├── rejecttokens-29.1+knots
        ├── qt_darkmode-29+knots
        └── ... (200+ patches)

Patch Naming Convention​

Patches follow the pattern:

<name>-<core_version>+knots

Examples:

  • dustdynamic-29.1+knots - Dust dynamic for Core 29.1
  • rbf_opts-29+knots - RBF options for Core 29.x
  • qt_darkmode-29+knots - Dark mode for 29.x

Viewing Patches​

List All Patches​

git log --oneline upstream/v29.0..HEAD --grep="^Merge" | head -50

Count Patches​

git log --oneline upstream/v29.0..HEAD --grep="^Merge" | wc -l

Examine a Specific Patch​

# Find commits for a patch
git log --oneline --all --grep="dustdynamic"

# Show the merge
git show <merge-commit>

# Show the actual changes
git log --oneline dustdynamic-29.1+knots ^v29.0

Patch Categories​

Patches are roughly categorized as:

Prefix/PatternCategory
pol_*, reject*Policy
wallet_*, sweep*Wallet
rpc_*RPC
qt_*, gui_*GUI
net_*, tor_*Networking
restore_*Restored features
fix_*Bug fixes

Updating Patches​

When Bitcoin Core releases a new version:

  1. Knots branches are rebased/updated
  2. Conflicts are resolved
  3. Patches are re-tested
  4. New Knots version is released

Contributing Patches​

To contribute a new patch:

  1. Fork the repository
  2. Create a feature branch from the current Knots branch
  3. Implement your changes
  4. Submit a pull request
  5. Maintainer reviews and potentially merges

See Contributing Guide for details.

See Also​