Quote from: CoinHoarder on January 05, 2016, 07:04:45 AM

Quote from: robinson5 on September 08, 2015, 03:10:25 AM

Hi I'm very excited about the new release! I downloaded it and when I first tried to open it I got the message:

siad errored: Error: spawn ./siad ENOENT

Same, but with 0.4.8 beta

Usually that means 'siad' could not be found. Are you sure you are using a clean download?

Quote from: dotabeard on January 05, 2016, 07:04:14 AM

Quote from: Taek on January 04, 2016, 06:14:43 PM

Yes. Jan 9th for v0.5.0-rc1
Jan 19th for v0.5.0

And we're aiming for v1.0 in March.

What are the key improvements/milestones of the different versions?

Version 1.0 is going to have a solidified API which promises to preserve backwards compatibility until version 2.0, which is likely to be several years away. We are not planning on creating a version two unless there is a very substantial reason to do so.
Version 1.0 should also have stronger sybil attack protection, better host tracking, and will feature improved scalability.
Version 1.0 should also have software that only needs to be run every 6 to 12 weeks, instead of the every 2 weeks that will be required by v0.5.0
Version 1.0 will feature paid downloads in addition to free downloads.

Version 0.5.0 is going to have persistent files - instead of files being lost after 6 weeks, files will be renewed automatically. (but you need to run Sia at least every 2 weeks so it can do the renewing)
Version 0.5.0 is going to repair files when they fall below a certain integrity.
Version 0.5.0 has a series of usability fixes and user-interface improvements, including a file browser with folders in the UI.
Version 0.5.0 has some additional metrics, and overall improved/smarter core logic.
Version 0.5.0 does faster uploading, and has higher parallelism and speed for transferring files.
Version 0.5.0 features faster startup time, and faster blockchain download time.

Overall, I think the changes are pretty significant. Version 0.5.0 should be usable and practical for backing up your real data, and as long as you run the software every week, data should stay up permanently. We've chosen to keep the times tight for version 0.5.0 so that we can verify hosts are working in a live environment before switching over to 1.0.

The vast majority of the listed v0.5.0 features have already been implemented. We will be spending most of our time doing testing and code quality improvements starting Thursday.