go-ipfs 0.4.10 is a patch release that contains several exciting new features,
bugfixes and general improvements. Including new commands, easier corruption
recovery, and a generally cleaner codebase.
The ipfs pin command has two new subcommands, verify and update. ipfs pin verify is used to scan the repo for pinned object graphs and check their
integrity. Any issues are reported back with helpful error text to make error
recovery simpler. This subcommand was added to help recover from datastore
corruptions, particularly if using the experimental filestore and accidentally
deleting tracked files.
ipfs pin update was added to make the task of keeping a large, frequently
changing object graph pinned. Previously users had to call ipfs pin rm on the
old pin, and ipfs pin add on the new one. The ‘new’ ipfs pin add call would
be very expensive as it would need to verify the entirety of the graph again.
The ipfs pin update command takes shortcuts, portions of the graph that were
covered under the old pin are assumed to be fine, and the command skips
checking them.
Next up, we have finally implemented an ipfs shutdown command so users can
shut down their ipfs daemons via the API. This is especially useful on
platforms that make it difficult to control processes (Android, for example),
and is also useful when needing to shut down a node remotely and you do not
have access to the machine itself.
ipfs add has gained a new flag; the --hash flag allows you to select which
hash function to use and we have given it the ability to select blake2b-256.
This pushes us one step closer to shifting over to using blake2b as the
default. Blake2b is significantly faster than sha2-256, and also is conjectured
to provide superior security.
We have also finally implemented a very early (and experimental) ipfs p2p.
This command and its subcommands will allow you to open up arbitrary streams to
other ipfs peers through libp2p. The interfaces are a little bit clunky right
now, but shouldn’t get in the way of anyone wanting to try building a fully
peer to peer application on top of ipfs and libp2p. For more info on this
command, to ask questions, or to provide feedback, head over to the feedback
issue for the command.
A few other subcommands and flags were added around the API, as well as many
other requested improvements. See here for a full list of changes.
