From: Zooko O'Whielacronx Date: Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:55:13 +0000 (-0700) Subject: rough draft of release announcement for 0.1 X-Git-Tag: tahoe_v0.1.0-0-UNSTABLE~41 X-Git-Url: https://git.rkrishnan.org/specifications/components?a=commitdiff_plain;h=1e1054f74b5e097d1900fcf604645811b3b14727;p=tahoe-lafs%2Ftahoe-lafs.git rough draft of release announcement for 0.1 --- diff --git a/relnotes.txt b/relnotes.txt new file mode 100644 index 00000000..3e5499ec --- /dev/null +++ b/relnotes.txt @@ -0,0 +1,105 @@ +Allmydata, Inc. [1], provider of the "Allmydata" consumer backup product, is +pleased announce the first public release of "Tahoe", an open source +decentralized storage mesh. + +The source code that we are releasing is the current working prototype for +Allmydata's next-generation product. This prototype it is not recommended +for storage of confidential data nor for data which is not otherwise backed +up, but it is already implements a functional decentralized storage mesh and +is useful for experimentation, prototyping, and extension. + + +Installation + +This release of Tahoe is guaranteed to work only on Linux. It may actually +work on other platforms -- earlier development revisions have been used on +Windows, Cygwin, Mac/Intel, and Mac/PPC -- but not all of the unit tests +currently pass on all platforms (see "Hacking and Community", below), so +we're officially proclaiming that it works on Linux. + +To install, download the "Tahoe" tarball from the web server [2], untar it, +cd into the resulting directory, and follow the directions in the README [3]. + + +Usage + +XYZ Brian: please insert intro to UI + + +Hacking and Community + +Please join our mailing list [4] and to discuss the ideas behind Tahoe and +extensions of and uses of Tahoe. Patches that extend and improve Tahoe are +gratefully accepted -- roadmap.txt [5] shows the next improvements that we +plan to make. You can browse the revision control history, source code, and +issue tracking at our Trac instance [6]. Please note the buildbot results +page [7], which show how Tahoe builds and passes unit tests on each checkin, +and the code coverage results [8] and percentage-covered graph [9], which +show how much of the Tahoe source code is currently exercised the test suite. + + +Licence + +Tahoe is offered under the GNU General Public License (v2). It also comes +with the added permission that, in the case that you are obligated to release +a derived work under this licence (as per section 2.b of the GPLv2), you may +delay the fulfillment of this obligation for up to 12 months. + + +Network Architecture + +Each peer maintains a connection to each other peer. A single distinct +server called an "introducer" is used to discover other peers with which to +connect. + +To store a file, the file is encrypted and erasure coded, and each resulting +share is uploaded to a different peer. The secure hash of the encrypted file +and the encryption key are packed into a URI, knowledge of which is necessary +and sufficient to recover the file. + +To fetch a file, starting with the URI, a subset of shares is downloaded from +peers, the file is reconstructed from the shares, and then decrypted. + +A single distinct server called a "vdrive server" maintains a mapping from +pathnames/filenames to URIs. + +We are well aware of the limitations of decentralization and scalability +inherent in this prototype. In particular, the completely-connected property +of the mesh and the requirement of a single distinct introducer and vdrive +server limits the possible size of the mesh. We have plans to loosen these +limitations (see roadmap.txt [5]). Currently it should be noted that the +mesh already depends as little as possible on the accessibility and +correctness of the introduction server and the vdrive server, and the choice +of which servers to use is easily configured. + + +Software Architecture + +Tahoe is a "from the ground-up" rewrite, inspired by Allmydata's existing +consumer backup service, written in Python. + +It uses the Foolscap library [10] which provides a remote object protocol +inspired by the capability-secure "E" programming language [11]. Foolscap +allows us to express the intended behavior of our distributed mesh directly +in object-oriented terms while relying on a well-engineered, secure transport +layer. + +The underlying networking is provided by the Twisted library [12]. +Computationally intensive operations are performed in native compiled code, +such as the "zfec" library for fast erasure coding (also available +separately: [13]). + + +[1] http://allmydata.com +[2] http://allmydata.com/source/tahoe-0.1.0-0-UNSTABLE.tar.bz2 +[3] http://allmydata.com/source/tahoe/README +[4] https://postman.allmydata.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe XYZ Zandr or someone: right URL? +[5] http://allmydata.com/source/tahoe/roadmap.txt +[6] http://allmydata.org/trac XYZ Brian: right URL? +[7] http://allmydata.org/buildbot XYZ Brian: right URL? +[8] http://allmydata.org/code coverage thingie XYZ Brian: right URL? +[9] http://allmydata.org/munin XYZ Brian: right URL? +[10] http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/wiki/FoolsCap +[11] http://erights.org/ +[12] http://twistedmatrix.com/ +[13] http://allmydata.com/source/zfec