Bitcoin Core tarball differences

[.anto.]

I always use the tarball from https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/releases. My wallet and 2 nodes are on Bitcoin Core 0.15.0.1. Today I want to upgrade them to Bitcoin Core 0.15.1.

I usually ignore the notes on that github release page which says the following:

Preferably use the above download link, not the below links to download the source tarball, as the release tarballs are generated deterministically and GitHub's are not.

I always use the tarball on the "below links", not the "above download link". What is/are the differences between them actually?

Thanks a lot in advance.

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[vv181]

The download link on the GitHub is the uncompiled source code, and the download on others site is the compiled program(binary file). So you don't have to compile the program directly from a source.

[.anto.]

The download link on the GitHub is the uncompiled source code, and the download on others site is the compiled program(binary file). So you don't have to compile the program directly from a source.

Thanks a lot. However, I want to compile it myself for my PC and 2 nodes which are running on Devuan distro.

I was actually wondering myself because there is actually no source tarball on https://bitcoin.org/en/download. There is a link there that brings me to the github repo. So I guess the only source tarball in on github.

[achow101]

Thanks a lot. However, I want to compile it myself for my PC and 2 nodes which are running on Devuan distro.

I was actually wondering myself because there is actually no source tarball on https://bitcoin.org/en/download. There is a link there that brings me to the github repo. So I guess the only source tarball in on github.

All of the released stuff (source tarballs, binaries, etc.) can be found here: https://bitcoincore.org/bin/ and https://bitcoin.org/bin/. You should use the source tarballs that are distributed from those places as those are the ones that are deterministically built and PGP signed by the release maintainer.

[.anto.]

All of the released stuff (source tarballs, binaries, etc.) can be found here: https://bitcoincore.org/bin/ and https://bitcoin.org/bin/. You should use the source tarballs that are distributed from those places as those are the ones that are deterministically built and PGP signed by the release maintainer.

Thanks a lot.

I just realised that there are source tarballs on https://bitcoincore.org/bin/ and https://bitcoin.org/bin/. I took https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.15.1/bitcoin-0.15.1.tar.gz. I have just re-compiled bitcoind and bitcoin-qt using that source tarball.

However, I could only have bitcoind successfully compiled. I already installed it on my 2 full nodes. I got the following error when I compiled bitcoin-qt:

Code:

dh_install --list-missing
Failed to copy 'share/pixmaps/bitcoin16.png': No such file or directory at /usr/share/dh-exec/dh-exec-install-rename line 32, <> line 2.
dh_install: problem reading debian/bitcoin-qt.install: 
debian/rules:27: recipe for target 'override_dh_install' failed
make[1]: *** [override_dh_install] Error 127

There is no share/pixmaps/bitcoin16.png on https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.15.1/bitcoin-0.15.1.tar.gz. When I diff-ed them, there are actually a lot of differences. There are 51 files only exist on bitcoin.org tarball, and there are 113 files only exist on github tarball.

So at the moment, I will keep using bitcoin-qt from github tarball. And I will closely watch the bitcoind running on my 2 full nodes. If there would be strange behaviours (I am not sure yet) compare to the behaviours of the one which tarball is from github, I will switch it.

[.anto.]

I just switched back my 2 full nodes to use bitcoind which source tarball is from github, as I trust it more.

I am not a coder. I don't know the impact of the 100+ differences between https://bitcoin.org/bin/bitcoin-core-0.15.1/bitcoin-0.15.1.tar.gz and https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/archive/v0.15.1.tar.gz. Unlike on the source code on github which I can track all changes, there is no information on the changes applied to the source tarball on bitcoin.org.