Documentation

The Basics

• ​about.html: the shape of a Tahoe filesystem and the security properties that it offers
• ​install.html: how to install it (from source code)
• ​running.html: how to run it once it is installed
• ​using.html: how to use it once it is running

• ​install-details.html: a big, unformatted, ill-maintained collection of notes about install issues on various platforms; Hopefully this doc isn't needed for you because the short and sweet "install.html" Just Works. If you love a certain platform and you write a nice install document describing how you build Tahoe on that platform then we will be grateful and you will earn a place in the CREDITS file.

Presentations / Papers

• The ​paper presented at ​PyCon2008, providing an overview of the Tahoe design, and the ​slides (.zip) that were used for the presentation.

Developer Docs

These docs are stored in the source tree, under revision control. You can browse them through the web site:

• the docs/ directory

Developer Wiki Pages

• UseCases: the ways in which Tahoe should be useful
• Security: known security issues and workarounds
• ShareEncoding?, explaining how we turn a chunk into shares: Reed-Solomon, FEC, that stuff
• PeerSelection, explaining how a Tahoe node chooses which other nodes to use for uploading and downloading files (which raises some unsolved issues in balancing scalability, robustness, performance, and simplicity)
• ChangingFilesWhileCopyingThem? : what are the semantics of the "upload" action? the upload takes non-zero time: what happens if the file is changed during that time?

Obsolete Docs

These docs are here in case someone wants to copy out the parts that are still relevant before deleting them.

• FileEncoding?, explaining how we turn files into shares, with verifiable hashes; This is mostly concerned with chunking and Merkle trees.

See Also

• The News page for sources of news and information.
• The Bibliography page contains links to scientific papers of interest.
• The RelatedProjects page contains links to a few other decentralized storage projects that you might be interested in.
• The Dev page for Tahoe hackers.

The Parade of Release Notes

• the release notes announcing v1.0 on March 25, 2008 -- It's version 1.0!
• the release notes announcing v0.9 on March 13, 2008 -- Tahoe is now ready to be relied on for secure storage
• the release notes announcing v0.8 on February 15, 2008, adding "visibility" into the system and more user interfaces
• the release notes announcing v0.7 on January 8, 2008, featuring decentralized directories and mutable files, a FUSE interface, and new open source licensing options
• the release notes announcing v0.6.1 on October 15, 2007, including packaging, usability, and performance improvements
• the release notes announcing v0.6 on September 24, 2007, including improved performance and packaging
• the release notes​ announcing v0.5.1 on August 23, 2007, fixing a security problem in the Web API
• the release notes announcing v0.5 on August 17, 2007, including the Web API and the command-line interface
• the release notes announcing v0.4 on June 29, 2007, including the new mutable, shareable, private directories
• the release notes announcing v0.3 on June 6, 2007, including improved basic functionality
• the release notes announcing v0.2, the first public release, on May 2, 2007 and giving a general overview of why the Tahoe project exists