Development Team

Welcome to the Development Team's home on the wiki. The purpose of this page is to provide you with information regarding the team and its projects. We can be reached via e-mail at dev@darenet.org or in #dev on the network, which is probably the easiest way to get in touch with us.

Current Members

Here is a list of our current team members.

Projects

ircd-darenet

We currently use a modified version of Nefarious IRCu. Rather than always downloading and modifying the source whenever new versions of nef+ircu are released, we decided to instead fork and maintain our own branch, since the amount of changes we've already made are quite significant. Such changes include the addition of spam bot detection, a refined operator privilege system, many backend enhancements, enhanced user & channel modes and much more.

services-darenet

As with our ircd, we've also made the decision to maintain our own branch of X3/Srvx.

website-darenet

Development of PHP sites without a preconceived plan to manage them is asking for a headache. The goal of a framework is to make the process of writing web-based applications easier. While there are already several PHP frameworks out there, none of them really provide everything DareNET's next generation web site will require; therefore, we have started working on our own, custom framework. More information can be found here.

The current site is built upon the Joomla framework, and boosts a wide variety of custom modules and applications. It is integrated with our IRC network, which presently allows individuals to register a NickServ (DareNET) account, which can then be used on IRC, to build user profiles, post to the forums, create social groups and much more.

The site is programmed in PHP and uses MySQL as it's database backend.

FAQ

Where can I download your projects?

Our ircd and services are based upon Nefarious IRCu and X3, both of which can be found here; however, they do not contain DareNET specific changes / features. While we do plan to eventually release our projects someday, your patience is required until it happens.

Why Don't You Use <insert your favorite wizz-bang feature here>?

There is always a temptation to use the newest operating system features as soon as they arrive. We resist that temptation.

First, we support several operating systems, so any new feature has to be well established before we will consider it. Second, most new wizz-bang features don't provide dramatic improvements. Third, they usually have some downside, such as decreased reliability or additional code required. Therefore, we don't rush to use new features but rather wait for the feature to be established, then ask for testing to show that a measurable improvement is possible.

So, we are not ignorant of new features. It is just that we are cautious about their adoption.

What Development Environment Does DareNET Use?

IRCd-DareNET is developed mostly in the C programming language, while services-darenet is developed in both C and Python. The source code is targeted at most of the popular Unix platforms.

Most developers run a Unix-like operating system and use an open source tool chain with GCC, GNU Make, GDB, Autoconf, and so on. If you have contributed to open source software before, you will probably be familiar with these tools.

The complete list of required software to build ircd-darenet and services-darenet can be found in the installation instructions.

How Do I Get Involved With DareNET Development?

If you are interested in contributing to DareNET's various development projects (e.g. ircd-darenet, services-darenet, web development, etc) please send e-mail to dev@darenet.org. If you are involved with other projects, please note this in your e-mail and possibly provide links to their project pages.

Other Resources

• Our Coding Standards
• Command Reference
• List of Operator Privileges
• Compiling IRCd-DareNET
• Web Development reference