This Month in Forest 🎄

Welcome to the ❄️ December edition of This Month in Forest! It’s a bit early, as the team will be resting for the holidays towards the end of the month. You can still reach out to us on regular channels; we’ll be monitoring them. We have some exciting updates to share from our recent activities and developments. Enjoy the read and see you in January! 🎆

Highlights

Forest Compatibility Report 📜

compatable adj. Also (in archaic systems literature) compatible. Pertaining to a supposed relationship between a given set of existing characteristics (known as the "installed set") and a mooted, nonexisting set (known as the "proposed set").
The Computer Contradictionary, Stan Kelly-Bootle

🎅 @AlexeyKrasnoperov brought you an early Christmas gift - the first Forest Compatibility Report, describing the current state of Forest compatibility with Lotus in terms of RPC coverage and correctness. If you're wondering whether you should give Forest a try and why - this the manuscript you're looking for.

benchmark v. trans. To subject (a system) to a series of tests in order to obtain prearranged results not available on competetive systems.
The Computer Contradictionary, Stan Kelly-Bootle

It also includes benchmark results for various RPC calls. Have a look how Forest performs!

RetroPGF Round 3 results

Forest projects and our ChainSafe's Filecoin services secured some funding through the FIL-RetroPGF-3 program. 🤑 We're glad our hard work is appreciated!

Forest - 8,125.37 FIL
Forest Archive - 3,587.22 FIL
Forest Explorer - 1,430.10 FIL
Filecoin Community Services - 796.59 FIL

See the complete results here.

Development

RPC methods

We implemented several /v2 RPC methods:

• Filecoin.EthCall,
• Filecoin.StateGetActor,
• Filecoin.StateGetID,
• Filecoin.ChainGetTipSet.

One /v1 method:

• Filecoin.FilecoinAddressToEthAddress

And an internal one for debugging and testing:

• Forest.ChainGetTipsetByParentState

Coverage reports are back

We revived the code coverage reports for Forest! You can now see the coverage percentage for each module in Codecov. Note that the actual coverage percentage is higher, as the tool does not account for integration tests we’re performing, such as RPC conformance on live nodes. We intend to further improve coverage in the coming months. 📈

Random improvements and fixes

fix n. & v. trans. [Latin figere "to attack with reproaches, to render immovable."] 1 n. A palliative shot in the system's arm, becoming less effective with each application 2 v. trans. To remove [a bug] by redefining the program specification in order to take advantage of an unexpected feature.
The Computer Contradictionary, Stan Kelly-Bootle

• We fixed a compound issue with deploying smart contracts using Forest and Forge. The fixes had to be implemented in RPC handling, mempool processing, and other areas. Oof! Nevertheless, smart contract deployment should now work smoothly.
• Forest now returns a 404 error on all unknown paths; previously, it’d default to the /v1 handler.
• Filecoin.GasEstimateMessageGas now returns the correct gas estimate; conformance tests have also been added.

And numerous other small improvements and fixes.

See the CHANGELOG for details. Note that it primarily contains client-facing changes, so if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty details, you’ll need to review the commit history. 🤓