Stop at header #31162

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

While preparing the little ter.gz file for https://github.com/fjahr/test_chain_init/issues/1 I stumbled upon the fact that one is unable to download just a couple of blocks in the beginning without synchronizing the full header chain.

I would be happy if the stopatheight option was respected also header-wise. This is a feature request.

Using 28.0 x86_64 Linux release binaries from bitcoincore.org

$ bitcoind -help -help-debug | grep -A 2 stopatheight
  -stopatheight
       Stop running after reaching the given height in the main chain (default:
       0)

Version tested:

 bitcoind -version
Bitcoin Core version v28.0.0
Copyright (C) 2009-2024 The Bitcoin Core developers

Please contribute if you find Bitcoin Core useful. Visit
<https://bitcoincore.org/> for further information about the software.
The source code is available from <https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin>.

This is experimental software.
Distributed under the MIT software license, see the accompanying file COPYING
or <https://opensource.org/licenses/MIT>

Thank you!

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

No response

Describe the solution you'd like

No response

Describe any alternatives you've considered

No response

Please leave any additional context

No response

For what would you need to use this kind of feature? This probably wouldn't be as simple to implement as current -stopatheight (one would need to keep downloading blocks after the last header was received but not accept any more headers), so I think that there should be a serious use case.

Does the hidden debug-only -minimumchainwork=0 not work for this use case?

Thank you @maflcko ! The minimumchainwork=0 does exactly what I was looking for.

Closing as solved.