To be able to create a library out of the BitCoin code (as I explain in http://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2075.0 ) and eventually create bindings in other languages for it (Python!), I cleaned Bitcoin's source code. I'm pretty much finished and the result is at:

http://bitbucket.org/hsoft/bitcoin-clean

So the question I'm asking you guys is: Should this be included in the main repository? Personally, I find the code much more readable now, but then I guess opinions can diverge, so that why I'm asking. The list of things I've done is described there:

http://bitbucket.org/hsoft/bitcoin-clean/src/f7995af49149/cleaning_process.txt

It's a huge change, but I doubt I introduced new bugs because I haven't changed a single line of actual code. I have just restructured it. If I had introduced bugs, my guess is that it would have been bugs causing the whole app not to work, but it builds and run fine (I get connections and I download blocks).

The next step towards my ultimate goal (libBitCoin, python bindings, alternate UIs) involves decoupling classes, which is more bug prone (because I have to actually change the code), but I added a tag in the repo (before-decouple) to indicate at which point I started modifying the code itself.

So, there I go: Do you find the cleaned code more readable and maintainable, or do you prefer the old one? Should it replace the official one on SVN?

I find the idea of BitCoin interesting, and I looked into its source code a little bit. I find it a bit monolithic and I thought it would be a good idea to extract the non-ui (and by that, I mean every UI, including RPC and command line) code and create a new library out of it.

This way, it would be easier to create alternative clients as well as bindings to other languages (Python!!!).

As anyone thought of it yet? Is there a particular reason why this would be doomed to failure?