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Thanks for submitting this issue @trim21, is the ask here to have a global option to always "pin" files?

Maybe @lidel or @hacdias can elaborate more on this, there seems to be some discussion in this issue: ipfs/ipfs-gui#10 (comment) which seems to indicate that files imported are already implicitly pinned (maybe I'm wrong), I think if that's true, the "pin" feature should just be removed.

@trim21 that is correct, if that's not the behaviour you experience. I'd like you to share your findings, that'll be a bug in the current implementation and that can be prioritized.

Thanks, this's the behaviour I want

Closing this issue as fixed, please feel free to reopen or submit a new issue if you face this again!

After some time, I find this is not a valid solution...

If you pin a directory with 2 files, and you upload a new file, the cid of directory will changed, the directory and newly uploaded file are not automatically pin-ed

For example, I have a directory called images, it now have 2 files, 1.jpg and 2.jpg

and I can pin directory images, I'm actually pinning cid1, for example QmWVi3AM6mzfCD8gdVLfyuM6QJEzEbq1b34dkSwRsMuE2K

But when I upload a new image, the content of directory changed, therefore the cid of directory also changed, and the new directory(which has the same name) is not pinned anymore, which mean I have to pin this directory again.

And when I pin it, I'm actually pinning cid2, for example Qmf4KCLrm2SCzCFkxFUt6c5QzNAW63W2xf6ghEj432XSrg

(funny enough, when I remove the newly added file, I can see the directory is pinned again)

So the suggestion doesn't fix this issue, I still have to pin the file I uploaded.

@whizzzkid can you re-open this issue?

@trim21 ok yes I see what you mean, apologies, reopening this issue.

I ran across this situation for my use-case too. In general a node keeps the items in the "files" area from being garbage-collected, but for different configurations of "Reprovider > Strategy", there is a setting for "pinned" but not for "in files", so having content be not just "in the local files directory" but actively pinned is important. Having the "pin" action in the "files" area not adjust when a file is uploaded then causes "orphaned pins" to exist (the previous CID of the folder is still pinned, when a new file is uploaded to it, and there's no way to browse/find that pin again in the UI without reverting the change to the folder in "Files").

I'd be in favor of the logic changing to:

In the "Files" section of the web UI, whenever a new file is added, a background process walks the file tree upward, looking at all the folders that it's contained in. If any of the folders are currently pinned, delete the existing pin and pin the new CID of the updated folder structure.