This is ngIRCd 26, the next major release of ngIRCd, the free, portable and lightweight Internet Relay Chat server for small or private networks.

This release contains all fixes and enhancements since ngIRCd 25, please see the release notes for ngIRCd 26~rc1 and ngIRCd 26~rc2 – or the ChangeLog file – for a detailed list of all changes.

The NEWS file lists the following new features since ngIRCd 25:

• Add AppStream metadata file (contrib/de.barton.ngircd.metainfo.xml).

• Allow up to 512 characters per line in MOTD and help text files (but keep in mind that lines can't get that long, because they have to be prefixed before being sent to the client). But this allows for more fancy MOTDs :-) Closes #271.

• Show the actually allowed channel types in the ISUPPORT(005) numeric which are configured by the AllowedChannelTypes configuration variable. Closes #273.

• Handle commands in the read buffer before reading more data and don't wait for the network in this case: If there are more bytes in the read buffer already than a single valid IRC command can get long (513 bytes), wait for this/those command(s) to be handled first and don't try to read even more data from the network (which most probably would overflow the read buffer of this connection soon).

• Log G-/K-Line changes only when not initiated by a server: this prevents the log from becomming spammed during "net bursts".

• Update test suite to include SSL tests, including checking for reloading certificates during runtime.

• Add support for GnuTLS certificate reload, which is quite handy when using Let's Encrypt, for example. Until now this was only supported when linked with OpenSSL. Thanks a lot, Hilko Bengen bengen@hilluzination.de!

• Allow setting arbitrary channel modes in the configuration file by handling them like in MODE commands, and allow multiple Modes = lines per [Channel] section. Thanks to Michi michi+ngircd@dataswamp.org! Closes #55.

• Add "FNC" (forced nick changes) to ISUPPORT(005) numeric. Most probably this doesn't make any difference to any client, but it seems correct. See http://www.irc.org/tech_docs/005.html for details.

• Enhance handling of command line errors, and return with exit code 0 ("no error") when --help or --version is used (which resulted in exit code 1, "error" before). Exit with code 2 ("command line error") for all other invalid command line options, and show the error message itself on stderr (instead of stdout and exit code 1, "generic error", as before). This new behaviour is more in line with the GNU "coding standards", see https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/_002d_002dhelp.html.

• Add ./contrib/nglog.sh: This script parses the log output of ngircd(8), and colorizes the messages according to their log level. Example usage: ngircd -f $PWD/doc/sample-ngircd.conf -np | ./contrib/nglog.sh

• Enlarge buffers of info texts to 128 bytes. This includes:

  • "Real name" of a client (4th filed of the USER command).
  • Server info text (Info configuration option).
  • Admin info texts and email address (AdminInfo1, AdminInfo2 and AdminEmail configuration options).
  • Network name (Network configuration option).

  The limit was 64 bytes before ... Closes #258.

• Streamline handling of invalid and unset server name: Don't exit during runtime (REHASH command, HUP signal), because the server name can't be changed in this case anyway and the new invalid name will be ignored.

• Slightly reorder startup steps, and enhance logging:

  • Show name of configuration file at the beginning of start up.
  • Add a message when ngIRCd is ready, including its host name.
  • Show name of configuration file on REHASH (SIGHUP), too.
  • Change level of "done message" to NOTICE, like "starting" & "ready".
  • Initialize IO functions before channels, connections, clients, ...

• configure.ng: OpenSSL can depends on lz or latomic so use pkg-config to find those dependencies and fallback to existing mechanism. Closes #256.