Antoine Poinsot on Bitcoin Core's Priorities

The decision to disable automated unit testing on Windows for Bitcoin, as outlined in a GitHub pull here, has sparked considerable debate within the community. This move was justified by years of unstable Continuous Integration (CI) performance and the significant amount of time maintainers had to invest to keep it operational. Despite these challenges, the critique that no efforts were made to ameliorate the situation appears to be contested, particularly with reference to another pull request (#31176) which suggests that there were attempts to address these issues.

The conversation then shifts towards the prioritization of development efforts within the Bitcoin project, especially concerning the core node. There is a sentiment that development should not be compromised at the expense of other components. However, this raises an important counterpoint about the maturity of new features being added to the core. Specifically, it argues that if new developments aimed at the core cannot be seamlessly integrated or made accessible to end-users, they might be considered incomplete. Such features, according to this perspective, should either not be merged until fully developed or merged with the acknowledgment that further work is necessary to refine them.

Moreover, there's an emphasis on maintaining the integrity and reliability of the Bitcoin wallet and GUI across all platforms. The discussion suggests that segregating the GUI into a separate repository should not lead to compromises in the API dependencies that could hinder feature additions. Ensuring that the wallet and GUI remain reproducible builds, are thoroughly tested on major platforms, and perform efficiently is highlighted as critical. Any regression from these standards is viewed unfavorably, underscoring the importance of adhering to high-quality development practices within the Bitcoin project ecosystem.