On Thu, Aug 22, 2013 at 3:33 PM, Mike Hearn <mike@plan99.net> wrote:

That would be annoying for testing. Regtest mode allows you to create a new block by just running "setgenerate true" (it switches itself off after creating a block). If you had to set up a complicated set of separate programs just to do regtest mode that'd be a step backwards, IMO.

There is some consensus that when the internal miner is to be removed, a simple miner should be packaged with the main repository as separate program (the "reference miner"?). The only change is that it does no longer need to burden the core code

(see also the discussion here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/pull/2917).

Wladimir