unrealircd/.RELEASE.NOTES

Unreal3.4-alpha0 Release Notes
===============================

This will be the first alpha version of UnrealIRCd 3.4.
Some important remarks:
* This version is NOT STABLE and since this is the very first alpha release
  it will probably CRASH or hang from time to time. Security issues are also
  more likely in this 3.4-alpha series.
  DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT USING THIS ON ANY SERIOUS (PRODUCTION) SERVER!!
  Use this alpha version to play around with the latest features and
  improvements, test them, and give us feedback(!) on bugs.unrealircd.org
  and/or on the forums.
* Linking of 3.2 <-> 3.4 is supported. However, because this is such an
  early alpha version we can make no guarantees about the impact of this 3.4
  server on the rest of the net. At this point WE DO NOT RECOMMEND LINKING
  3.4-alpha* to a 3.2 PRODUCTION/LIVE NETWORK.
* Things are likely to change between alpha versions. Including configuration,
  commands, etc. You should not make any assumptions as long as 3.4 is in
  alpha stage.
* If you are moving from 3.2.x then be sure to read 'CONFIGURATION CHANGES'!

==[ GENERAL INFORMATION ]==
* The official UnrealIRCd documentation for 3.4 is currently not up to date.
  Translations have not been updated at all, don't use them for now!
  The online version is available at www.unrealircd.com/unreal32docs.html
  FAQ: http://www.unrealircd.com/faq
  Read them before asking for help.
* Report bugs at http://bugs.unrealircd.org/
* The purpose of the sections below (NEW, CHANGED, MINOR, etc) is to be a
  SUMMARY of the changes in this release.  There have been many changes in
  total, for the full list of changes see the Changelog.

==[ CONFIGURATION CHANGES ]==
* In your me { } block, change your "numeric" to "sid", and change the
  value as follows: pick a 3 character Server ID that starts with a digit.
  For example: sid "001";
* For loadmodule lines you can (and should) now use the shorter syntax.
  Instead of:
  loadmodule "src/modules/cloaks.so";
  You should now use:
  loadmodule "modules/cloak";
  UnrealIRCd will figure out the exact name of the module. Doesn't matter
  if you are on Windows or *NIX, and if your modules are in src/modules/ or
  in modules/.
* The commands module is gone and replaced with many individual modules:
  1) Remove the loadmodule line for commands.so 
  2) Add the following line to your unrealircd.conf:
     include "modules.conf";

==[ NEW ]==
* Entirely rewritten I/O and event loop. This allows the IRCd to scale
  more easily to tens of thousands of clients by using kernel-evented I/O
  mechanisms such as epoll and kqueue.
* Memory pooling has been added to improve memory allocation efficiency
  and performance.
* The local nickname length can be modified without recompiling the IRCd

==[ CHANGED ]==
* Numerics have been removed. Instead we now use SIDs (Server ID's) and
  UIDs (User ID's). SIDs work very similar to server numerics and UIDs 
  help us to fix a number of lag-related race conditions / bugs.
* The module commands.so / commands.dll has been removed. All commands
  (those that are modular) are now in their own module.
* We are in the process of moving channel and user modes to individual
  modules. All usual modes are included in modules.conf by default but
  you can decide not to load some of them, simply by commenting them out.
  Not only does this provide more customizability, it also makes it much
  easier for developers to look at all the code for a particular feature.

==[ MAJOR BUGS FIXED ]==
* None?

==[ MINOR BUGS FIXED ]==
* None?

==[ REMOVED / DROPPED ]==
* Numeric server IDs, see above.
* PROTOCTL TOKEN and SJB64 are no longer implemented.
* Ziplinks have been removed. We recommend to use SSL/TLS for all server
  connections. SSL/TSL already includes compression (when available).

==[ KNOWN ISSUES ]==
* Regexes: Be careful with backreferences (\1, etc), certain regexes can
  slow the IRCd down considerably and even bring it to a near-halt.
  In the spamfilter user target it's usually safe though.
  Slow spamfilter detection can help prevent the slowdown/freeze, but
  might not work in worst-case scenario's.
* Regexes: Possessive quantifiers such as, for example, "++" (not to be
  confused with "+") are not safe to use, they can easily freeze the IRCd.

==[ ADDITIONAL INFO ]==
* See Changelog for more details