This is a maintenance release to fix a critical bug; we urge all users to upgrade.
Looking at the release notes, I don't understand which of the changes fixes a
critical bug. Is this one of the OS X specific changes, or is it about a bug that affects all platforms? What is the impact of the bug?
The blockchain getting corrupted and the program crashing when you start it or when you send money are kind of annoying...
This whole thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=337294.0OK, so just to be sure: if I understand correctly,
- This bug certainly affects OS X users, and possibly (but probably not) users of other platforms.
- The impact of the bug is that your local copy of the block chain gets corrupted, causing program crashes and generally making it impossible to use the software
- The bug does not lead to a wallet corruption, and it does not allow hackers to do nasty things, such as bitcoin theft or gaining access to your computer
I wanted to know this, because I follow certain procedures when upgrading to a new version, and this will take some time. Since I've been using 0.8.5 without problems on an non-OS X platform for a while, I think I can safely continue to do so, until I've finished the upgrade to 0.8.6.