[Unreal-users] Unreal3.4-alpha1 & Unreal3.2.10.4 released, help us, move to GitHub, ..

[Bram M. <sy...@vu...>]

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Hi all,

There has been a lot of activity on the UnrealIRCd project past few months!

Index
======
* UnrealIRCd 15 years!
* New website
* Survey results
* Help us with development
* UnrealIRCd 3.4
* UnrealIRCd 3.2
* Move to GitHub
* GitHub/Twitter account
* Finally

UnrealIRCd 15 years!
=====================
In May of this year UnrealIRCd celebrated its 15th birthday.
See http://forums.unrealircd.com/viewtopic.php?t=8271 where I thanked all
past coders, contributors and the community (you!) for all the support.
In the same article I also wrote about the past and future development of
UnrealIRCd, openly speaking about the difficulties we have encountered and
the challenges in moving forward.

New website
============
On UnrealIRCd's 15th birthday www.unrealircd.com got a new design as well.
The new website is easier to navigate and just looks a lot more 'clean'.
Thank n0kS for all the work on this.

Survey results
===============
I've made a document summarizing the results of the UnrealIRCd survey. In
total 342 people completed the survey, (almost) all of them were admins
running UnrealIRCd. Thanks *a lot*! This was really useful. The survey
results are (already) used to guide future 3.4.x development.
In general people are really satisfied with UnrealIRCd (49% even gave us a 9
or 10 out of 10), but we can always do better and we got many suggestions.
The UnrealIRCd survey results are available from:
http://www.unrealircd.com/files/UnrealIRCd%20Survey%20results.pdf
(apologies in advance for the lack of fancy graphics)

Help us with development
=========================
I welcome Travis McArthur (Heero) who recently joined as an UnrealIRCd 3.4.x
developer. Travis has already worked on channel mode +d, improving the
module API and modularizing modes and is - besides many other things -
working on documenting the 3.4 Module API to make the source code more
understandable for new (module) coders.

If you are a C programmer and interested in helping out with 3.4.x
development then send an e-mail to sy...@un... and we can discuss.
Even if it's just for the summer vacation you're more than welcome to help.

UnrealIRCd 3.4
===============
This weekend I released the first alpha version of UnrealIRCd 3.4:
3.4-alpha1. Although 3.4 development started well over a year ago, this
version marks the beginning of the alpha series: we plan to release an alpha
version every month or so, the exact release schedule depends highly on the
changes and bugs we encounter.
Since this is an alpha version, and in fact the very first one, we strongly
discourage you to run 3.4-alpha1 on a production network.
However, if you are curious and want to help us by testing and reporting
bugs at http://bugs.unrealircd.org/ then please go ahead and download it.
Just don't be (too) surprised by the bugs you will encounter and if it
crashes from time to time.

Major enhancements in 3.4-alpha1 compared to 3.2.x are:
* We moved a lot of channel and user modes to modules, while at the same
time improving the module system as a whole. This means A) You can now
easily choose not to load a particular feature if you don't like it (we will
be moving more in next few versions!), B) It makes it easier for coders to
see all source code related to a specific feature, C) Enables you to fix /
"patch" something and reload (the module) rather than needing to restart the
entire IRCd.
* The I/O engine has been rewritten. This makes the IRCd feel a lot more
'responsive' and can potentially accept a lot more users. Still, the entire
system is not as stable as 3.2.x yet.
* The SSL version of the IRCd will now boot even if you have no SSL
certificates. Naturally SSL won't work then, but this means you can safely
compile with SSL support even if you don't intend to use it straight away.
This also means for 3.4.x we only provide the SSL version of Windows
downloads, if you insist on not using SSL then simply don't make a
server.*.pem certificate.
* A new channel mode +d which hides joins/parts for users who don't say
anything in a channel. Whenever a user speaks for the first time they will
appear to join. Channel ops will still see everyone joining normally as if
there was no +d set.
* Behind-the-scenes: A lot of source code cleanups, enhancements, memory
pooling, simplifying the code, all to make the source better and also more
readable for (new) developers. This should make it easier for the community
to contribute patches.
* There have been some configuration changes, Unreal 3.4 will not boot with
your existing 3.2.x unrealircd.conf! Be sure to read the section
CONFIGURATION CHANGES in the Release Notes. In later alpha versions more
configuration changes may be necessary.

This first alpha version contains by no means all of the changes and
features we would like to see in the final version of UnrealIRCd 3.4. There
will be many major changes to come.

UnrealIRCd 3.2
===============
I forgot to send out an announcement to this mailing list for 3.2.10.3 which
was released on the 31st of May.
3.2.10.3 has the following bugs fixed:
* Crash when SASL is enabled and ping-cookie is disabled (a rare combination)
* Compile issue with remote include
* OS X compile problems
* ./unreal backtrace not always working well
Two days ago I released another update: 3.2.10.4. This fixes the following
two major issues:
* Compile problems with clang, which is the default compiler on a number of
systems nowadays.
* Newer services like anope 2.0 allow you to log in by account name, this
means you don't necessarily get user mode +r (registered nick). Previously
even if you logged in to anope you could still not join +R channels
("registered only") or speak in +M channels ("only registered users may
speak"). Now this has been fixed.

In addition to these two issues, the OpenSSL/curl/.. libraries for the
Windows build have also been updated to the latest versions. Plus an update
to the shipped curl-ca-bundle.crt, which now contains the latest certificates.

If you are not encountering any of the issues from above then there's little
reason to upgrade from 3.2.10.2 or 3.2.10.3.

Move to GitHub
===============
To give UnrealIRCd development more exposure and make it easier for people
to contribute we decided to move our source code over to GitHub. This was
actually one of the suggestions that came out of the UnrealIRCd survey.
This means from now on the Mercurial repository is no longer functional.
See this FAQ item http://www.unrealircd.com/faq.php#82 for more information
on how to access the 'bleeding edge' source code.
Or go directly to our GitHub page on
https://github.com/unreal-ircd/unrealircd

Note that the bug tracker, downloads, and all the rest of the project will
stay at www.unrealircd.com. It is only our repository (source code) which
moved to GitHub.

GitHub/Twitter account
=======================
We are searching for the owner of the 'unrealircd' account on GitHub, and
similarly the owner of @unrealircd on Twitter. We already sent a message to
both accounts but received no response.
Presumably these accounts were registered in advance with good intentions,
ensuring nobody else could take them, as a placeholder until the project
needs it.
That moment is now, if you are the owner of one of these accounts (or know
who is) then please contact sy...@un...

Finally
========
I'm really glad to see all the activity on the UnrealIRCd project as a whole
and on 3.4.x in particular. I hope more people will jump in to help out,
either as a developer or simply by testing the 3.4.x releases and reporting
bugs or giving suggestions.
Since there's a lot more activity now, especially on 3.4.x, this newsletter
and release announcements is likely to be sent out more often than before. I
hope everyone sees this as a positive sign, but if not then you can always
unsubscribe.

Finally, as always..
* You can download UnrealIRCd from www.unrealircd.com - Downloads
* All our releases are signed with our release key 0x9FF03937
* Thanks everyone for their continued support!

- -- 
Bram Matthys
Software developer/IT consultant        sy...@vu...
Website:                                  www.vulnscan.org
PGP key:                       www.vulnscan.org/pubkey.asc
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