For the Derpnet IRC server project.

The folder doc contains the new set of RFCs for IRC (numbers 2810-2813). The old RFC (number 1459) is superceded by these. In addition, our own technical and non-technical documents are in this folder.

We have an IRC channel: #derpnet at irc.foonetic.net. Our faithful bot DerpBot will tell us whenever someone pushes an update. This channel is for bootstrap purposes until we have an existing DerpNet implementation.

Open source implementations that we have found should be added here:

• An incomplete Haskell implementation: http://chrisdone.com/posts/2011-01-30-hulk-haskell-irc-server.html

WE HAVE MIGRATED TO AUTOTOOLS. Here are the important consequences of this:

We are now using a non-recursive autoconf/automake. You should edit Makefile.am and configure.ac ONLY -- not Makefile itself. That is a scary thing. After doing so, before you commit, run 'make clean'. That will propagate the changes from those two files to the rest of the important ones. Please look especially at Makefile.am, as most of it is pretty simple, and also important, if you wish change the structure of the source.

Secondly, we now have NEWS and ChangeLog. I'm going to say that we should probably let ChangeLog be empty until we're at the point where we're making small, organized changes. NEWS is a good place to put what you're doing.

Thirdly, we now have an AUTHORS file. This file is not complete, and ideally will include @DerpNet email addresses for the authors (possibly in addition to other addresses).

Also, style things:

All .h files should be wrapped in #ifndef #endif, as all currently are.

Includes are grouped by class:

• First, system things outside of Derpnet.
• Second, files within Derpnet that are NOT in the current folder (and thus use <> instead of "" -- important!). Third, other files in the same folder, which should always use "". Fourth, the file's own header.

Please avoid using printf in favor of one of the message methods in errors.cc; the guidelines for usage are:

• Status messages are for normal messages of any kind
• Warnings indicate a potential problem that doesn't disrupt service (yet)
• Errors mean there may have been a minor disruption of service for a few users
• Major errors are problems that completely disrupt service on a large scale and may require drastic action to resolve, such as a server restart. These should not be suppressed or ignored.

Indentation should be done with tabs. For users for whom this is not desirable, git contains rules which can be used to automatically replace tabs and spaces on commits and pulls.