For those interested I have a working spec file for Bitcoin 0.12.0
https://github.com/AliceWonderMiscreations/bitcoin/blob/master/contrib/rpm/b...
I believe the only BuildRequires that isn't in CentOS/EPEL is miniupnpc-devel but that's trivial to build as well.
With Bitcoin 0.12.0 the ECC stuff that Red Hat ripped out of OpenSSL doesn't matter anymore.
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That spec file is somewhat based on what https://www.ringingliberty.com/bitcoin/ does for Fedora / CentOS with a couple noted differences -
A) I don't have SELinux stuff (yet). His SELinux stuff is broken on CentOS 7. Only matters for the bitcoin-server package, the GUI client doesn't seem to matter.
B) He uses system BerkeleyDB. I build BerkeleyDB when building bitcoin because BerkeleyDB is fragile enough that changes to it can cause a wallet that can't be read by other clients.
C) He adds a patch that adds functionality needed by a very small demographic - hardware machines that sell bitcoins. I prefer to not add that patch because I prefer pristine source rather than modifying what the devs produced for a feature 99.9% of the population doesn't need.
So I prefer to stick with the precise version that bitcoin.org uses in the binary builds they distribute. Happens to be same version CentOS 7 has now but that may not always be the case. It isn't with CentOS 6.
Anyway if anyone one this list has interest, figured I'd share the spec file. Adding SELinux to the server package I will work on.
Oh the referenced patch that is there is only needed for LibreSSL, you can comment it out to build against OpenSSL.
0.12.0 seems much faster at indexing than previous versions, and catches up faster when it is behind on blocks.