[Bug]: v0.50 init cmd uses wrong json marshaller

[nhannamsiu]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

What happened?

This is how init cmd saves genesis file on v0.47. It uses correct cometbft json pkg to marshal.

func (genDoc *GenesisDoc) SaveAs(file string) error {
	genDocBytes, err := cmtjson.MarshalIndent(genDoc, "", "  ")
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}
	return cmtos.WriteFile(file, genDocBytes, 0644)
}

This is for v0.50.1. It uses default golang json pkg to marshal in x/genutil/types/genesis.go

func (ag *AppGenesis) SaveAs(file string) error {
	appGenesisBytes, err := json.MarshalIndent(ag, "", "  ")
	if err != nil {
		return err
	}

	return os.WriteFile(file, appGenesisBytes, 0o600)
}

This led to confusing error when we tried to run the node, especially after upgrading to v0.50.1, which breaks many stuff.

Cosmos SDK Version

v0.50.1

How to reproduce?

1. Run init command on both v0.47.x and v0.50.x to generate genesis files.
2. Compare 2 files and see that on v0.47.x it's "initial_height": **"1"** while on v0.50.x it's "initial_height": **1**

[julienrbrt]

v0.47 uses a CometBFT genesis, while v0.50 uses an application genesis. The encoding is indeed different, but CometBFT genesis is still supported on v0.50. Take a look here: https://docs.cosmos.network/v0.50/build/modules/genutil

On the other hand, you should not be getting any errors. I am curious which errors have you got?

[nhannamsiu]

I get this after init and try to start the node, it's coming from initial_height int64.

panic: error reading GenesisDoc at /Users/nam/.fluxd/config/genesis.json: invalid 64-bit integer encoding "1", expected string

[julienrbrt]

Are you starting the correct binary? It looks like you are starting a v0.47 chain with a v0.50 application genesis.

[nhannamsiu]

I ported my chain node from 0.47.x to v0.50.1 and start seeing this error. On the main branch that uses 0.47 it's running fine. I have init script to craft node genesis every time I build so it's not from the old version.

[nhannamsiu]

Confirm it's fixed when I change default json to cmtjson. The sdk uses cmtjson to read from file, so it makes sense to marshal using the same package when we init and write genesis to file.

[julienrbrt]

Okay, could you post the genesis, your repo link/snippet and the steps to reproduce?

Best would be that you try to reproduce with simapp (v0.50 and v0.47)

[julienrbrt]

Closing as stale.

[yihuang]

@julienrbrt we have indeed broken the genesis format in SDK 0.50, the json type of initial_height field is changed from string to number, it at least breaks the command bootstrap-state as far as I can tell.

because the genesis of a chain can be generated by any legacy version, we need to be aware of these format changes whenever we need to parse the genesis file, fortunately we have used a custom low level json parser for the chain-id parsing.

[julienrbrt]

Right, this makes sense for functions in comet that were directly reading the genesis. Good one!
However, within the SDK we always support both.