RPC: Remove 'getwork' deprecated mining protocol #2905

Use getblocktemplate instead.

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This breaks contrib/pyminer/, yes?

Porting contrib/pyminer to use getblocktemplate would be spiffy.

@gavinandresen Good point. Does anyone object if I use my python-blkmaker module for the port?

Just do it.

Unless serious objections are raised by the community, ACK. A python reference miner sounds good, but can wait, I guess. We should probably at least remove contrib/pyminer in this pullreq too, though.

Rebased, and fixed a couple comment bugs.

Considered removing contrib/pyminer, but decided that was best left for a separate commit. I agree it would be nice to update pyminer, or another simple reference miner, to use getblocktemplate. Maybe cpuminer, with all assembly, 4way, etc. stripped out would fit the bill better than updating pyminer.

The person who does the work will decide, I imagine :)

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From the poolowners mailing list:

"My pool still uses getwork for some miners..."

I'm not plugged into the mining world, so I'll let y'all figure out whether or not it is ok to obsolete those miners.

That comment was from me. I'm not opposed to getwork being removed although I do currently use it. If I choose to continue supporting getwork I can back it with GBT. I'll need to stick to an older bitcoind until I get this done of course but I backport security issues to what I'm running when I can.

Well, based on the latest comments, it is easy to be safe and paitent and use 0.9 release as the opportunity to announce that getwork is being removed. Add "deprecated" to the help text.

Therefore, closing this pull req.

I am neutral on removing getwork, although there seem to be scattered reports of getwork on 0.8.2+ causing RPC problems? I am not sure if this has been filed somewhere.

I don't see any reason to try to put everything into a single git repository. libblkmaker already has a simple C example that can be used as a GBT reference.