doc: remove unshipped doc references from help and warning text #34839

This addresses #32565 by removing user-facing runtime/help text references to markdown files under doc/ that are present in the source tree but are not shipped with Bitcoin Core binary releases.

The updated strings are in:

• src/init.cpp
• src/wallet/init.cpp
• src/rpc/blockchain.cpp
• src/rpc/mempool.cpp
• src/rpc/output_script.cpp

The scope is intentionally narrow. It does not:

• change behavior
• ship documentation files
• add online documentation links
• refactor the help system

Testing:

• git diff --check 52e8c1ce32a24d94b8fe06fa5e17bf8a176e50f0..HEAD
• rg -n "doc/(policy/packages|design/assumeutxo|descriptors)\.md|github\.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/design/assumeutxo\.md" src/rpc src/init.cpp src/wallet/init.cpp

The grep returns no matches. No new tests were added, since this change only updates user-facing help text and does not modify behavior.

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The following sections might be updated with supplementary metadata relevant to reviewers and maintainers.

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Code Coverage & Benchmarks

For details see: https://corecheck.dev/bitcoin/bitcoin/pulls/34839.

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Conflicts

Reviewers, this pull request conflicts with the following ones:

• #35027 (net: add -outboundbind option for outgoing source address by 8144225309)
• #17783 (common: Disallow calling IsArgSet() on ALLOW_LIST options by ryanofsky)
• #17581 (refactor: Remove settings merge reverse precedence code by ryanofsky)
• #17580 (refactor: Add ALLOW_LIST flags and enforce usage in CheckArgFlags by ryanofsky)
• #17493 (util: Forbid ambiguous multiple assignments in config file by ryanofsky)

If you consider this pull request important, please also help to review the conflicting pull requests. Ideally, start with the one that should be merged first.

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LLM Linter (✨ experimental)

Possible typos and grammar issues:

• by below -> below / by default [“specified by below” is grammatically broken and unclear]

^{2026-05-19 09:15:08}

ACK 4ed0cc624f8b3457f632ac1698270d2f40bcfe91

Reviewed the diff and verified that the touched help/warning files no longer contain doc/*.md references.

Ran:

• git diff --check 52e8c1ce32a24d94b8fe06fa5e17bf8a176e50f0..HEAD
• rg -n 'doc/[A-Za-z0-9_./-]+\\.md|doc/[A-Za-z0-9_./-]+' src/init.cpp src/wallet/init.cpp\n\nI did not build binaries, since this is a help/warning text-only change.

Concept ACK - You've missed a few:

• doc/policy/packages.md
• doc/design/assumeutxo.md (links to master, not sure we want that)
• doc/descriptors.md

Updated in 160900070476cff1f79d0e7a7aefbf7ffe7979cc.

This removes the additional C++ RPC help references mentioned in the CACK:

• doc/policy/packages.md from submitpackage
• doc/design/assumeutxo.md / the master-branch link from loadtxoutset
• doc/descriptors.md from both scantxoutset and deriveaddresses

Re-ran:

• git diff --check 52e8c1ce32a24d94b8fe06fa5e17bf8a176e50f0..HEAD
• rg -n "doc/(policy/packages|design/assumeutxo|descriptors)\.md|github\.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/design/assumeutxo\.md" src/rpc src/init.cpp src/wallet/init.cpp

The grep now returns no matches. I did not build binaries, since this is still only help text changes.

You'll need to squash your commits.

Squashed into one commit and force-pushed: 0ec1ce2e064bebb71412ef98a611f0fcbef7eee8.

Re-ran:

• git diff --check 52e8c1ce32a24d94b8fe06fa5e17bf8a176e50f0..HEAD
• rg -n "doc/(policy/packages|design/assumeutxo|descriptors)\.md|github\.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/doc/design/assumeutxo\.md" src/rpc src/init.cpp src/wallet/init.cpp

The grep returns no matches.

ACK 0ec1ce2e064bebb71412ef98a611f0fcbef7eee8

Hmm, seems fine, but what is the point of the docs, if they can not be referred to? This just means less people will read them, and they might be confused. Also, the docs are shipped in the git archive tarball for every release, no?

This is a small follow-up to #34693

Also, I don't see how those are related pulls. One is fixing links inside the docs itself, this one is removing link from "outside" completely.

they might be confused

They are probably also confused by the fact we reference docs we don't ship. I don't think the fact that they exist in the archive is that relevant, given that isn't (generally) what ships to end users.

Yeah, I see, but has there been a complaint by users? IIUC a search engine can trivially find the file: E.g. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=bitcoin+core+doc%2Fdescriptors.md . I know it doesn't point to the right branch and it is online-only, but it seems better than no reference to docs at all.

This is just my opinion, but I think leaving this as-is is better than removing them.

Ok. Closed #32565 to consolidate any further discussion here. I'm also fine if we leave this as-is.

Updated the PR description to avoid framing this as a direct follow-up to #34693 and to include the RPC help strings in the scope.

The intent here is #32565: avoid pointing binary users at local doc/*.md paths that are not included with binary releases. I agree this trades off some documentation discoverability; I’m not trying to settle a broader documentation-linking policy in this PR.

Closing for now. I think this may be too controversial. Though, happy to re-open if another reviewer thinks this is important.