Development Team

Revision as of 09:51, 7 April 2009

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

ircd-darenet is based on Nefarious IRCu, from the lovely people on the evilnet development team. Rather than always downloading and modifying the source, to fit our needs, whenever a new version of nef+ircu is released, we decided to instead fork and maintain our own branch. The amount of changes already made are quite significant; therefore, we felt this was the best route to go. Such changes include the addition of a spam bot detection system, a refined operator privileges system, numerous backend enhancements, tweaks to both user & channels modes and much more.

services-darenet

services-darenet is currently based on srvx and x3.

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.

Why doesn't DareNET use Git?

There is only one distribution of each of our projects; therefore, there is no requirement for a decentralized model. Some may prefer this model, but this remains a preference, not a requirement. This is why we have chosen to stick with SVN for the time being.

But Linux uses Git, you say? Well, the Linux kernel requires a distributed model with people pulling multiple patches, because there are multiple Linux kernel streams under active maintenance. This isn't the case for DareNET. To us, the benefits of decentralization, for a project which is by its nature, centralized, are limited to ability to work in a disconnected state, and ability to create permanent branches with no dependencies on the original repository. Do we have a requirement to do either? SVK allows one to pull data from an SVN server providing for decentralization if need be.

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

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