We were thrilled to release our first beta in late February, but we weren’t just
going to sit back and rest on our laurels.

Instead, we immediately set our sights on refining our product, incorporating
valuable user feedback, and developing innovative features that would take our
software to the next level.

## New beta available

We are excited to announce our new beta release and warmly invite you to test
it!

```bash
$ go install github.com/PlakarKorp/plakar/cmd/plakar@v1.0.0-beta.4
```

During our pre-beta phase, we concentrated on building the core of
Plakar—ensuring reliable data storage and reconstruction. Now that these
critical components are in place, we can shift our focus to enhancing the user
experience with intuitive features that simplify your work.

Since these read-only features are low-risk, we plan to roll out frequent
updates with new functionalities just appearing release after release. This is
the perfect opportunity for you to test them and help us shape the tool that
best meets your needs.

## Previews

Our web UI provided previews of text content with syntax highlighting and
images:

|         Text           |             Image             |
| :-------------------------: | :---------------------------: |
| ![](webui-preview-dark.png) | ![](webui-preview-dark-2.png) |

In addition to this, latest beta added preview for PDF, audio and video content:

|             Video             |              PDF              |
| :---------------------------: | :---------------------------: |
| ![](webui-preview-dark-3.png) | ![](webui-preview-dark-4.png) |

This works with either a local repository or a remote one, regardless of whether
it's encrypted or not. You can easily preview data from a backup hosted on a
remote, encrypted repository using a Plakar UI launched locally. The local UI
fetches data in real time as it’s read and decrypts it on the fly, so there's no
need to download the entire backup or stream any bytes in cleartext.

This is the first in a series of new features designed to make the user
interface more efficient at helping you find exactly what you need. Without
giving too much away, additional exciting features are set to roll out in the
coming days!

## Test improvements

Tests are crucial, and I firmly believe that developers should avoid writing
tests for their own code. If I have flawed logic in mind and write both the code
and its tests, we end up verifying that my bug is correctly implemented—which
isn’t our goal 😄.

Peer review is invaluable—especially given Plakar Korp’s requirement for two
reviewers and our extensive experience with it. However, as a small team that
frequently collaborates on the same code, we risk developing shared assumptions
that might lead us all to the same flawed logic. I also prefer that our
developers focus on their strengths, particularly R&D problem-solving, since
that is an area where external help is harder to come by than testing.

In January, we had tests for the most critical parts of Plakar that affected
storage format and could potentially lead to data corruption. However, we wanted
broader coverage that also included the non-critical components. We decided to
bring on an extra resource focused solely on testing, and
[@sayoun](https://github.com/sayoun) expressed interest, so he began working
with us.

Since then, he has diligently reviewed every piece of code we write, adding the
missing tests for each package and command. This approach allows the team to
concentrate on improving the software while [@sayoun](https://github.com/sayoun)
brings a fresh perspective to testing without being too involved in other
discussions. We’re thrilled to see new tests emerging, catching bugs, and
enhancing overall quality.

Most recently, his efforts have focused on testing the CLI subcommands—the most
user-visible part of Plakar—and he has already helped fix several command-line
issues.

## Documentation improvements

This effort was spearheaded by [@omar-polo](https://github.com/omar-polo), who
took on the heavy lifting of restructuring our documentation—converting all
previous materials into a unified format and meticulously addressing every
detail. The entire team also contributed by polishing the content, adding more
examples, and fixing typos, with significant input from
[@semarie](https://github.com/semarie), a familiar face from the OpenBSD project
that we were delighted to see around.

As a result, all our documentation in [mandoc format](https://mandoc.bsd.lv/)
now adheres to a consistent structure, enabling us to effortlessly automate the
generation of Markdown versions. These versions are seamlessly displayed to
users through `plakar help` and synchronized on our
[documentation site](https://plakar.io/docs/community).

## Optimizations

We implemented several optimization improvements—nothing too fancy, but small
wins are still wins!

Among these, two stand out:

- [@mathieu-plak](https://github.com/mathieu-plak) discovered and fixed an issue
  with our use of the `binary` package, which had been causing poor performance
  in packfile deserialization. Although the performance boost is significant,
  packfile deserialization is rarely used, so the improvement is only noticeable
  in specific scenarios. Nevertheless, this fix prompted us to review similar
  constructs to ensure we hadn't made the same mistake elsewhere.

- [@omar-polo](https://github.com/omar-polo) enhanced certain lookups by
  employing an optimized scan of our B+ tree rather than a node traversal in
  some cases. This change significantly boosts performance when scanning all
  entries of a backup.

As a side note, we've begun working on deeper optimizations that are expected to
deliver even bigger gains. Stay tuned for an upcoming article detailing these
enhancements.

## Bugfixes

Based on user feedback—especially from [@b1pb1p](https://github.com/b1pb1p),
[@ncartron](https://github.com/ncartron),
[@ajacoutot](https://github.com/ajacoutot), and
[@semarie](https://github.com/semarie)—we have resolved minor bugs that affected
SFTP support and the agent when using specific command options.

## Packaging

In January, [@ajacoutot](https://github.com/ajacoutot) emailed me to let me know
he had packaged Plakar for the OpenBSD project. At the time, we were finalizing
the storage format before freezing it, so I asked him to hold off to avoid users
having to trash their data when the beta was released. Now that the beta is out
and the storage format is stable, he updated his port and
[committed it to the OpenBSD project](https://github.com/openbsd/ports/tree/master/sysutils/plakar)—OpenBSD
users can simply run `pkg_add plakar` to get started!

On the same day, [@lbartoletti](https://github.com/lbartoletti) informed me on
IRC that he had
[packaged Plakar for the FreeBSD project](https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-ports/tree/main/archivers/plakar),
meaning FreeBSD users will soon be able to run `pkg add plakar`.