Documentation

The Basics

• architecture.txt: the design decisions that have given the grid its current shape
• UseCases: the ways in which Tahoe should be useful
• webapi.txt: everything you need to know to use Tahoe from your own program
• roadmap.txt: how the functionality has been incrementally improved so far, and what improvements we plan to make next
• codemap.txt: the software design and the organization of the source code
• configuration.txt: how to configure a tahoe node and what persistent state it creates

The Parade of Release Notes

• 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
• the release notes announcing v0.3 on June 6, 2007, including improved basic functionality
• the release notes announcing v0.4 on June 29, 2007, including the new mutable, shareable, private directories
• the release notes announcing v0.5 on August 17, 2007, including the Web API and the command-line interface
• the release notes​ announcing v0.5.1 on August 23, 2007, fixing a security problem in the Web API
• the release notes announcing v0.6 on September 24, 2007, including improved performance and packaging

Detailed Design Docs

• mutable.txt, explaining the interesting crypto tricks that go into secure distributed mutable files
• FileEncoding?, explaining how we turn files into shares, with verifiable hashes; This is mostly concerned with chunking and Merkle trees.
• ShareEncoding?, explaining how we turn a chunk into shares: Reed-Solomon, FEC, that stuff

Outstanding Issues

• 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?