IRC-Junkie.org – IRC News

The Atheme project just tagged version 5.2.0 of their IRC services package which contains quite a few interesting changes from the previous version, 5.1.1.

Atheme IRC Services Logo

Atheme 5.2.0 introduces a new database format called “OpenSEX” which is available as a technology preview in this release and will be mandatory once Atheme 6.0 is released. According to developer nenolod, the revised format was introduced to “remove legacy stuff and provide an extendable API“.

HostServ gained the OFFER command which allows opers to – surprise – offer vHosts to their users. All of ChanServ and NickServs SET commands are now seperate modules which can be loaded individually, allowing networks fine-grained choosing of which functionality they provide to their users.

The team developing the Atheme IRC services just tagged version 5.1.0 of their services package.

The new release brings a lot of bugfixes, feature additons and enhancements as well as a slew of modules that have been contributed to the project by other developers.

Also, a few changes have been made to the available IRCd protocols, mostly improvements and additions concerning InspIRCd support but also a new module which provides support for the Ithildin IRCd has been added. Support for the legacy hyperion daemon, previously used on freenode, has been dropped and support for ShadowIRCd has been updated.

Those who closely follow either projects development will have noticed a few “odd” looking commits to their sourcecode in the past few days.

The commits all concerned InspIRCds m_invisible module which provides similar functionality as the old mode +I in UnrealIRCd 3.1.x.

Quoting the InspIRCd wiki page about m_invisible the module

adds support for quiet (invisible) opers. A quiet oper is invisible to normal users on channels. This can be used for surveillence of botnet channels, statistics bots, etc. Note that other opers CAN see invisible opers; +Q only hides the oper from non-opers.

Atheme, an IRC services package used by many mainstream networks – the largest being Freenode – is updated to version 5.0.

Aside from a host of fixes it now also provides BotServ and HostServ services.

Developer nenolod hints of another upcoming big addition: “There is also a web interface for atheme coming out on friday” but “it’s not quite done yet.”

We managed to get a preview of whats to be expected and grabbed a few screenshots of the webinterface in action:

Channel management from the web

Sending memos from the web

“ChatSpike is migrating to Atheme IRC Services (from ircservices 5 which we have been using since we started, 6 years ago)” Brain said to IRC-Junkie.

W00t explains why IRC Services no longer serves the network. “IRC services was and is a big influence on the IRC landscape, to me. It was one of the first packages to be OSS’d, it was actively developed over a long timeframe, and incorporated user feedback. It supported a wide range of IRC daemons, and was also one of the earliest packages to get modules support”