Additional Bitcoin-Qt capability to mine regtest blocks #28387

Please describe the feature you'd like to see added.

Able to mine blocks through the Bitcoin-Qt while in Regtest mode.

Is your feature related to a problem, if so please describe it.

Feature addresses none ideal uX with Bitcoin-Qt and mining regtest blocks. Currently if you want to use the console of Bitcoin-Qt you would need to close this out and then use bitcoin-cli separately to mine blocks.

When running Bitcoin-Qt in regtest mode it's clear by seeing a blue Bitcoin logo instead of the orange one. <img width="75" alt="Screenshot 2023-09-01 at 6 23 34 PM" src="https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/assets/7761473/d792ef8c-9078-4132-ab19-71af9ac6bf18"> However, there is no way to thoroughly test some capabilities without having the ability to mine blocks.

Describe the solution you'd like

Bitcoin-Qt is able to use generate or -generate flag similar to what bitcoin-cli can do.

Currently if you run generate the response is:

has been replaced by the -generate cli option. Refer to -help for more information.
 (code -1)

Describe any alternatives you've considered

Having bitcoin-cli shipped with all binaries on bitcoincore.org.

Please leave any additional context

low priority

See my updated answer on stackexchange; you can just use getnewaddress + generatetoaddress from the RPC console.

this works like a charm:

# generates a new address
getnewaddress
bcrt1qw6s75nqguln9xzjk7y75thfjpc7ylkq8y5yvnr

# generates 100 blocks and sends to address.
generatetoaddress 100 bcrt1qw6s75nqguln9xzjk7y75thfjpc7ylkq8y5yvnr

Related:

• https://github.com/bitcoin-core/gui/pull/692