[ANNOUNCE] Electrum - Lightweight Bitcoin Client

[Tachikoma]

1.7 pre-release is up. Loads of things were added and changed so please help us test it before we can officially release it.

[ThomasV]

version 1.7 is out! announcement will follow!

[Tachikoma]

Electrum 1.7 Released

After a few months of hard work we are proud to announce Electrum 1.7. A lot has changed both the inside and outside of the application. Let me run through the list.

Plugin support
The classic gui can now be extended with plugins. Developers who want to add new features to Electrum or let Electrum interface to third-party services are now welcome to do so. Some core functionality in 1.6 and lower has now been refactored into a plugin.

Electrum ships with the following plugins by default.

• Alias - Retrieve aliases using http.
• Label sync - Syncs your labels between Electrum installs/instances.
• Point of Sale - Adds a window with QR Code and more payment information.
• QR Scanner - As the name implies
• Virtual Keyboard - Adds a virtual keyboard to the password dialog.

Interactive console
The wall has been turned into a virtual console. The provided python environment gives users access to the wallet and gui. Most
electrum commands are available as python function in the console. Custom scripts an be loaded with a "run(filename)"
command. Tab-completions are available.

Offline wallets
Offline wallets now work in a way similar to Armory:

1. User creates an unsigned transaction using the online (watching-only) wallet.
2. Unsigned transaction is copied to the offline computer, and signed by the offline wallet.
3. Signed transaction is copied to the online computer, broadcasted by the online client.
4. All these steps can be done via the command line interface or the classic GUI. ("Load transaction" from "Import/Export" tabs in settings)

Private key exports
Private keys can be exported from within the classic GUI. For a single address, use the address menu (right-click). To export the keys of your entire wallet, use the settings dialog (import/export tab). It will dump your private keys to a csv file.

Multi-sig transactions
It is possible to create, sign and redeem multisig transaction using the command line interface. This is made possible by the following new commands: dumpprivkey, listunspent, createmultisig, createrawtransaction, decoderawtransaction, signrawtransaction. The syntax of these commands is similar to their bitcoind counterpart. For an example, see Gavin's tutorial: https://gist.github.com/gavinandresen/3966071

Wallet location for Windows changed
The location of the Electrum folder in Windows changed from LOCALAPPDATA to APPDATA. Discussion on this topic can be found here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=144575.0. This process should be automatically done for you but if a wallet is found in both folders it might ask you to resolve it yourself.

Address generation
The wallet waits for 2 confirmations before creating new addresses. This makes recovery from seed more robust. Note that it
might create unwanted gaps if you use Electrum 1.7 together with older versions of Electrum.

Various changes
Because of the internal changes there are currently problems creating the "single .exe build" of Electrum. Only the installation option is available. The good news is that command line options for this version are working and the style for the Lite GUI is packaged again.

Both setup and stand-alone are now available.

Also if somebody could let me know if the "upgrade notification" in 1.6.2 was working that would be great

Downloads available on the Electrum site
Bug tracker

[ICantThinkOfaName]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

[Tachikoma]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

This is intended for now. Enabling that console windows makes it so Electrum can accept command line options; without that window it won't accept it and things like portable mode or opening an other wallet are not possible.

[nimda]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

This is intended for now. Enabling that console windows makes it so Electrum can accept command line options; without that window it won't accept it and things like portable mode or opening an other wallet are not possible.

That sounds strange... I've written and used several Windows programs that accept command-line options without a console window. From where does this constraint stem? Are you calling AllocConsole()?

[Tachikoma]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

This is intended for now. Enabling that console windows makes it so Electrum can accept command line options; without that window it won't accept it and things like portable mode or opening an other wallet are not possible.

That sounds strange... I've written and used several Windows programs that accept command-line options without a console window. From where does this constraint stem? Are you calling AllocConsole()?

It is a result of PyInstaller what is currently used to build the windows packages. If you disable the console it won't accept command line arguments. If you have more experience in such methods please check out the build scripts and see if you can help us improve the windows packages.

[nimda]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

This is intended for now. Enabling that console windows makes it so Electrum can accept command line options; without that window it won't accept it and things like portable mode or opening an other wallet are not possible.

That sounds strange... I've written and used several Windows programs that accept command-line options without a console window. From where does this constraint stem? Are you calling AllocConsole()?

It is a result of PyInstaller what is currently used to build the windows packages. If you disable the console it won't accept command line arguments. If you have more experience in such methods please check out the build scripts and see if you can help us improve the windows packages.

Interesting. I've never used PyInstaller but I'll see what I can do.

[ThomasV]

apologies, we had to make a last minute fix to the 1.7 package on the website; there was a bug with imported keys.
please upgrade if you encounter it.

[cavveman]

No standalone version for 1.7?

[Tachikoma]

No standalone version for 1.7?

Let me quota you the correct passage of the announcement I wrote, it's a bit long so you might have missed it.

Because of the internal changes there are currently problems creating the "single .exe build" of Electrum. Only the installation option is available. The good news is that command line options for this version are working and the style for the Lite GUI is packaged again.

[zxyzxy]

i upgraded using electrum-v1.7-setup.exe now it wont run on my win32, what is going on? it says electrum.exe is not a valid win32 application.

can i somewhere download previous (old) version that worked fine for me? thanks.

[dave111223]

i upgraded using electrum-v1.7-setup.exe now it wont run on my win32, what is going on? it says electrum.exe is not a valid win32 application.

can i somewhere download previous (old) version that worked fine for me? thanks.

Delete your C:/Program Files/Electrum/ folder.

Then download and install this version: http://download.electrum.org/download/electrum-1.6.2-setup.exe

[Tachikoma]

i upgraded using electrum-v1.7-setup.exe now it wont run on my win32, what is going on? it says electrum.exe is not a valid win32 application.

can i somewhere download previous (old) version that worked fine for me? thanks.

Normally Slush builds the windows build on wine, which results in a 32bit binary. Slush was not available to build the latest binary for windows so I build it, but it seems I build a 64bit binary. I will see if I can ping Slush to build new packages or else I will see if I can switch my build environment to 32bit.

Sorry about the inconvenience.

[SomeWhere]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

This is intended for now. Enabling that console windows makes it so Electrum can accept command line options; without that window it won't accept it and things like portable mode or opening an other wallet are not possible.

That sounds strange... I've written and used several Windows programs that accept command-line options without a console window. From where does this constraint stem? Are you calling AllocConsole()?

It is a result of PyInstaller what is currently used to build the windows packages. If you disable the console it won't accept command line arguments. If you have more experience in such methods please check out the build scripts and see if you can help us improve the windows packages.

I don't know about Python, but in C / C++ you just need to do this:

Code:

ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE);

Part of the WinAPI.

[Tachikoma]

The 1.6.2 upgrade notification definitely works.

I have problem though.  I'm on the windows version and whenever I open my wallet I also get a separate console window.  If I close it, my wallet closes as well.

This is intended for now. Enabling that console windows makes it so Electrum can accept command line options; without that window it won't accept it and things like portable mode or opening an other wallet are not possible.

That sounds strange... I've written and used several Windows programs that accept command-line options without a console window. From where does this constraint stem? Are you calling AllocConsole()?

It is a result of PyInstaller what is currently used to build the windows packages. If you disable the console it won't accept command line arguments. If you have more experience in such methods please check out the build scripts and see if you can help us improve the windows packages.

I don't know about Python, but in C / C++ you just need to do this:

Code:

ShowWindow(GetConsoleWindow(), SW_HIDE);

Part of the WinAPI.

I appreciate the idea; but that won't help us. We are using PyInstaller to build the Windows binaries. If you can find something about PyInstaller that could do that please let me know

[brincobt]

The Electrum 1.7 build for Windows from http://download.electrum.org/download/electrum-v1.7-setup.exe
is 64bit and does install but does not run in Windows 32bit.

I had to step back and download Electrum 1.6.2 from http://download.electrum.org/download/electrum-1.6.2-setup.exe.

Please use the proven installer as from 1.6.2 also for 1.7 to have compatibility with Windows 32bit.

[SomeWhere]

It's really too bad it was written in Python, I don't have the time to learn a new language at this point. I would have loved to contribute - I have so many ideas, and Electrum is exactly the kind of client I wanted.

[flatfly]

It's really too bad it was written in Python, I don't have the time to learn a new language at this point. I would have loved to contribute - I have so many ideas, and Electrum is exactly the kind of client I wanted.

Electrum (the client) was also ported to Javascript (implemented as a Chrome extension), if you're more familiar with that.
I can't find the URL right now, though.

[Tachikoma]

The first bugfix release 1.7.1 just got put online. It has a couple of bug fixes that were reported for 1.7.

The official Windows build was still 64bit but I think I managed to build a 32bit binary since then.

I would appreciate it if somebody who couldn't use the previous builds would try this file: http://download.electrum.org/download/electrum-v1.7.1-32bit-setup.exe.