Syncthing v0.13.0-beta.4 - last chance to test before you have to live with it forever

Syncthing v0.13.0 isn’t released yet, but these notes are valid for the development builds and betas in the meantime and give an overview of what to expect from the actual release.

Upgrade Notes

:bangbang: Not protocol compatible with v0.12.x.

:bangbang: The database format has changed. It will be migrated without rescan on first startup, but the first startup may take longer than usual.

:package: Download the release packages manually here. This beta release is not available vi apt-get, but there are Debian packages here.

:arrow_down: You can downgrade again by simply running the latest v0.12 release. If there have been many changes since the upgrade to v0.13 there may be sync conflicts, as the v0.12 format database hasn’t been updated.

There are probably more changes to come. Do not run this release unless you’re willing to participate in experimenting.

Relevant changes since beta.3

  • Config format change for read only / “master” folders: <folder type="readonly"> vs old <folder ro="true">.
  • Add env var to disable proxy fallback
  • A few bug fixes, you can view the full list of changes.

Important Changes and Improvements

:heavy_check_mark: Temporary Indexes

Devices now announce files that are in progress of being downloaded, in addition to those that are already complete. This means a device can serve parts of a file to other devices before it has completed the download itself.

(Thanks @AudriusButkevicius )

:books: Documentation to update

  • “Configuration” article, adds new config fields

:heavy_check_mark: Folder Labels

Folder labels are now distinct from the folder ID. The intention is for the label to be human readable and for the ID to be machine readable and unique. When upgrading, folder IDs are not changed. However when creating new folders Syncthing will suggest a random, unique folder ID.

(Thanks @lkwg82)

:books: Documentation to update

  • Getting started guide
  • “Configuration” article, adds new config fields

:heavy_check_mark: Identification of Connections from Unknown Devices

When receiving a connection attempt from an unknown device Syncthing will now show the name of that device, not only it’s ID.

(Thanks @AudriusButkevicius )


Minor Changes and Improvements

  • NAT-PMP support. Syncthing will now manage port mappings on NAT-PMP compliant routers, in addition to the existing UPnP support.

  • Ignored files can now be tagged with the prefix (?d) to indicate that Syncthing may delete these files if they remain when deleting a directory. Ignore patterns use less memory by default.

    • :books: Requires documentation update!
  • The address for sync connections, both the listening side and for remote devices, can now be made IPv4- or IPv6-only. Use the tcp4:// or tcp6:// schemes to specify one or the other. The default tcp:// is still dual stack.

  • The folder settings dialog has been cleaned up.

2 Likes

Of course one annoying error was discovered mere seconds after publishing the beta. If you run into this, know that it’s fixed:

Does the temporary indexes stuff mean that it’s now possible to have a device upload files to another device, while displaying the progress of that upload?

Yes, yet I don’t think there is an API change, as we just adjust the completion percentages accordingly.

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Although somewhat incorrectly under some yet unknown circumstances, so expect to see >100% completion now and then for now :]

BTW there will be only bugfixes on this branch now until v0.13.0 proper is released, so this is the one to check your APIs and stuff against.

Not sure if it’s been reported but it appears that commas in the .stignore files need to be escaped now or synthing reports errors in the file.

2 Likes

News to me. Thanks, I’ll take a look!

Also, is the android client in the app store compatible with beta.4? (In the release notes it says beta.3 only)

The current beta version of the Syncthing Android app uses beta3 and needs changes to work with beta4.

But: From the “Relevant changes since beta.3” in this thread and a quick look at the commit history from beta3 to beta4 I would say, that there were no breaking changes in protocol, so beta3 should be able to sync with beta4. So you can test this beta 4 on your non Android devices while using the current Android beta (with ST beta3) on your Android.

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While that’s true, there is actually a change in discovery protocol between them that I think we forgot to note. beta.3 clients will not find beta.4 clients via global discovery, and vice versa.