Strategy Change, Unreal3.2.7 Release, New Website

News about the UnrealIRCd project, including release announcements
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Stskeeps
Former UnrealIRCd head coder
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:24 pm
Location: Hell, On, Earth

Strategy Change, Unreal3.2.7 Release, New Website

Post by Stskeeps »

[ Strategy change ] - This is important, please read.

Unreal3.2.7 will be released on 14th July 2007 - marking 8 years since the first UnrealIRCd release. With this, we've decided to do a rather big change in strategy. Fact is, the Unreal3 code base has gone stale and is not suitable to service your IRC networks for 8 more years.

We've been working to improve this code base but run into serious issues constantly due to old code laying about and design decisions in the past by previous coders that has locked us into an IRCd that can hardly evolve.

In light of this, and through that people have worked on a IRCd from scratch, in C++ - InspIRCd. InspIRCd was made by people who initially used Unreal, but foresaw that something radical was needed to fix the IRCd code base so many IRCds share.

InspIRCd was partly inspired by Unreal and this means that it will be easier for us to move on to the logical step - we're forking InspIRCd (through a tight cooperation with them), to give
you Unreal4.0. For more information on the new core, see http://www.inspircd.org - any documents
dealing with module coding, server protocol, etc, works for Unreal4 too - as we will be the project that extends from bare (InspIRCd) to colourful and featureful (UnrealIRCd) and the goal is to be able to move modules from Unreal to InspIRCd without problems.

The target is for both development teams to work what's their speciality - we're dedicated to give our users service, implement features and maintain stability and innovate, where InspIRCd also has some of these qualities, but focuses more on a base IRCd that can be extended
with new features through modularity and maintaining a stable core that just works and performs well.

The fork will not be a hostile one - the idea is to have a shared core (InspIRCd) and we work together on inventing and implementing new ideas that can be added through the module system, and we will work alone on features that InspIRCd coders may not want to touch and reverse.

We hope to shape InspIRCd in our image and provide an Unreal4 that feels like an Unreal3 - same configuration format, same quality documentation, support, etc, and in the progress give you users the ability to have a "modern" IRCd that can handle loads and loads of users, and still give you the choice to choose what features your network wants to use.

The Unreal3.2 branch will continue mostly as bug fixes - and adding ability to link to Unreal4, so we're not giving up on you people who want to keep on running Unreal3, but when this link is stable (in 3.2.8 - based off 3.3), and Unreal4 is as feature complete with Unreal3, we stop supporting Unreal3.

So, how will this affect you? We could need a hand. Enter the development wiki on http://dev.unrealircd.com/ - aid out and find out what we're missing in Unreal4 to make it an IRCd you'd switch to. Test the SVN, find bugs we introduce, and we hope this cooperation between InspIRCd and UnrealIRCd will lead to a new age in IRCd development and for IRC networks in general - since we have many new ideas we can try out together.

Hang out in #unreal-devel on irc.unrealircd.com - we're interested in having you along. Making modules should be slightly easier from now on as well.

[ New Website ]

Our webmaster, nate, has redesigned UnrealIRCd.com for us - if you have comments on the design or any aspect of the new website, please comment in the IRC channel or in the comments on this new item.


[ Unreal3.2.7 ]

As a minor sidenote, we've also released Unreal3.2.7, with some minor changes yet important - elaborated in Changes. The IRCd can be downloaded through http://www.unrealircd.com :)

- Updated c-ares to 1.4.0, TRE to 0.7.5
- chmode +L does no longer require chmode +l
- Oper blocks now can have CIDR, as in "userhost *@127.0.0.1/32";
- Services coders: SVSNOLAG/SVS2NOLAG (described in Changes) will allow a user to avoid fake lag (ie, flood as much as he/she wants).
- More intelligent accept() handling - that is, take in multiple times at a time instead of one per I/O loop
- A lot of bug fixes, basically.

[ Known issues found in testing ]

- CHROOTDIR does not work nicely together with the new patch where you can do hardcoded
IRC_USER / IRC_GROUP (setuid / setgid with names), due to having to look up password files.
- Spamfilter warn does not work with /setname
- Documentation is not complete
- There is a problem with bans getting truncated we are still trying to investigate. Happens in 3.2.6 too.
Last edited by Stskeeps on Fri Jul 20, 2007 10:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Bricker
Posts: 88
Joined: Tue May 03, 2005 7:31 am
Location: Sterling, VA, USA

Post by Bricker »

Best of luck guys!
-Bricker-
PingBad

Post by PingBad »

good luck with the upcoming changes guys (and gals)!
Stskeeps
Former UnrealIRCd head coder
Posts: 23
Joined: Mon Mar 20, 2006 9:24 pm
Location: Hell, On, Earth

Post by Stskeeps »

For good measure.. if you think this means Unreal is stopping to develop, or have other worries about this, please post here. I'm more than up for taking a discussion with you people about this. Also, join #Unreal-devel on irc.unrealircd.com if you want to talk.
dafunks

Post by dafunks »

It all depends on what exactly this all means for Unreal, it can only be a good thing that a long term strategy is being put into place to ensure the longevity of the project. The thing I'm mostly concerned about is whether or not the project will have to take two steps back to take one step forward. What I mean is, are we going to lose the feature rich IRCd we have all come to know and take for granted because it will be too much work to implament all existing features. Im not a c coder, so no real idea what exactly will need to be done, if anything at all, hence my concern.

Regardless, Unreal will remain my IRCd of choice and I look forward to seeing what plays out. :)
w00t
Posts: 1136
Joined: Thu Mar 25, 2004 3:31 am
Location: Nowra, Australia

Post by w00t »

If you look, we're actually not missing much - and gaining a lot more, like sqlauth, timed bans, failover linking, etc.

Take a look through the wiki
-ChatSpike IRC Network [http://www.chatspike.net]
-Denora Stats [http://denora.nomadirc.net]
-Omerta [http://www.barafranca.com]
TechSlayer
Posts: 2
Joined: Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:22 pm

Re:

Post by TechSlayer »

dafunks wrote:It all depends on what exactly this all means for Unreal, it can only be a good thing that a long term strategy is being put into place to ensure the longevity of the project. The thing I'm mostly concerned about is whether or not the project will have to take two steps back to take one step forward. What I mean is, are we going to lose the feature rich IRCd we have all come to know and take for granted because it will be too much work to implament all existing features. Im not a c coder, so no real idea what exactly will need to be done, if anything at all, hence my concern.

Regardless, Unreal will remain my IRCd of choice and I look forward to seeing what plays out. :)
dafunks,

My interpretation thus far is that Unreal has done a very good job of taking slow steps forward as to not compromise our experience as user. I have run in to plenty of platforms and software that have ripped features apart trying to make improvements and i am glad to say that Unreal is not one of them. Proud to be a part of it...bumping threads should be okay if it is complimentary right??
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