EPIC news archive

This page covers EPIC6 development news and historical EPIC4/EPIC5 announcements. The dated EPIC6 entries summarize UPDATES and upstream commit history; links to individual references explain current behavior and requirements.

EPIC6

2026-10-30: Authentication checks and scripting fixes

Upstream commit 70a655b6 (internal commit ID 3106) includes static-analysis fixes and these interface changes:

• The supplied sasl script checks TLS certificate verification before sending PLAIN credentials and accepts an optional certificate-hash exception. See SSL connections.
• Compiled-regex consumers validate Base85 decoding and decoded structure size. Capture extraction and cleanup accept current compiled strings.
• ctcpctl() returns empty for unknown getter names and supports GET ... REPLACE_ARGS. ecdsatool() operation names are case-insensitive.
• disconnect and reconnect correctly parse server selectors, quit reasons, and -force/-safe; reconnect safe mode refuses to reset a registered session.
• msg and notice split long text at approximately 440 encoded bytes. window topline stores slots 1 through 99, while display and windowctl access remain limited to nine.
• Installation carries configured CPPFLAGS into compilation. The supplied scripts fix delayed argument expansion and Python startup code.

2026-08-30: Scripting additions and retired interfaces

These announcements cover changes made between December 17, 2025 and August 30, 2026.

• sortby() adds custom word-list sorting, stricmp() compares two quoted words, and the <=> sort operator performs case-insensitive string comparison. The swap operator is now =>.
• The nicklist and nickcolor.irc scripts add a channel nickname display and nickname-based colors.
• Hexadecimal constants are supported in integer contexts.
• Python 3.8 became the minimum supported version for Python integration.
• IRCCHANNEL selects a channel to join after the initial server connection, like the -c command-line option.
• Server-password and operator-password prompting were retired. Termcap support was retired; terminal handling uses terminfo.
• The suppress_from_remote_server and allow_c1_chars settings, uhc(), mesg, botmode, and the stop_irc binding were retired. Use the startup -b option to launch in the background.
• The removed hooks include encrypted_notice, encrypted_privmsg, flood, help, note, notify_signon, notify_signoff, redirect, and wall.
• Static analysis with Cppcheck and Coverity led to bug fixes.

2025-12-17: Installation types

The --with-installtype=prod configure option installs the executable under its configured name without the commit-number suffix and symlink used by the default installation type. See installing EPIC6.

2025-08-18: Comma-separated level sets

Level sets use comma-separated names rather than space-separated names, allowing a set to be passed as a single word to interfaces such as window notify_level.

2025-06-05: Compiled regular-expression encoding

regcomp() and related compiled-regex functions use Base85 for their encoded state.

2025-06-01: Base85 transformations

xform() gained the B85 transformation for ASCII85 encoding and decoding, using the <~...~> wrapper.

2025-05-27: SASL mechanism names

SASL rules use the server’s exact mechanism spelling and case, such as EXTERNAL, ECDSA-NIST256P-CHALLENGE, SCRAM-SHA-512, and PLAIN. The supplied sasl script selects its best matching rule rather than trying multiple rules for a server.

2025-05-26: SCRAM authentication and output contexts

• The sasl script gained SCRAM-SHA-512 support. scrambox() supplies its low-level SCRAM operations.
• on context reports output-context creation, and shh can suppress display for the context’s lifetime.

2025-05-16: SASL, capability negotiation, and server properties

• The sasl script provides a unified place to configure supported authentication mechanisms.
• Capability discovery runs during connection setup. on cap exposes capability offers and acknowledgments; serverctl’s cap_hold field can delay the end of negotiation until a script releases its hold.
• serverctl() gained access to the server-description port and cert fields.

2025-05-12: ECDSA and vhost handling

ecdsatool() adds key generation, public-key extraction, and challenge signing. Vhost handling caches resolved addresses; numeric addresses avoid hostname lookup, while a hostname can require a blocking lookup on first use.

2025-04-30: Socket and key-binding changes

Unix-domain-socket server connections were retired. Control-S is no longer bound to toggle_stop_screen by default.

2025-04-10: Compact JSON and connection policy

json_implode() defaults to compact output. The policy server state, between reconnect and dns, provides a point to adjust a server description before connection work begins.

2025-03-08: EPIC6 direction

EPIC6’s development emphasizes simpler interfaces and retiring obsolete facilities. The announced retirements include C90-only environments, shebang startup, redirect and flush, CPU saver, incoming flood control, embedded Perl and Ruby, legacy encryption types, the old math parser, Shift-JIS handling, and termcap-only environments. Mail checking and nickname monitoring moved from built-ins to scripts. Unlimited input lines and mouse interaction are among the additions.

2025-02-17: Mouse support

set mouse enables click-to-focus and scrollwheel handling on compatible terminals. Scrollwheel events affect the current input window. Mouse reporting can change the terminal’s text-selection behavior.

2024-12-12: Destructive token extraction

token() returns the text before a literal delimiter and replaces the named variable with the text after it. When the delimiter is absent, it returns the whole value and clears the variable; spaces are ordinary characters.

2024-08-26: EPIC6 fork

EPIC6 forked from EPIC5.

2016-02-13: EPIC5 2.0 announcement

EPIC5 2.0 was announced on February 13, 2016. Its epic5-2.0 tagged source records February 12, 2016, with internal_version 20160212.

2014-04-13: EPIC5 1.1.10

EPIC5 1.1.10's source release date is April 13, 2014. Its release commit, 8390b7ef, records internal commit ID 1781.

EPIC5 1.1.9 had been withdrawn because of a serious bug. The 1.1.10 release highlights were:

• $encodingctl() supplied low-level control over /encoding rules.
• $fix_width() was rewritten to match its intended behavior.
• Most string-manipulation functions became UTF-8 aware, counting code points rather than bytes where applicable.
• /xtype -L, $[num]var padding/truncation, and /fec gained UTF-8 handling.
• Case-insensitive comparisons and matching, including == and $rmatch(), gained Unicode-aware behavior subject to locale support.
• The scripting environment's UTF-8 support was substantially expanded.

These were release highlights rather than guarantees that every string operation counted display columns or handled every Unicode text operation identically.

2014-04-04: EPIC5 1.1.8

EPIC5 1.1.8, internal commit ID 1775, was released on April 4, 2014. The announcement highlighted:

• UTF-8 support for the console, scripts, and IRC messages.
• Encoding conversion for messages sent to and received from IRC.
• 256-color support.
• UTF-8-aware string functions such as $mid() and $split().
• Additional improvements recorded in the source history.

Available encodings and usable conversions depend on the system and EPIC’s conversion rules.

2014-03-31: EPIC4 2.10.5

EPIC4 2.10.5, internal commit ID 779, was released March 31, 2014, adding full Maildir support contributed by Jari Turkia.

2014-02-11: EPIC4 2.10.4

EPIC4 2.10.4, internal commit ID 778, was released February 11, 2014. Its changes included a new unicode script from |Rain| and a fix for $(IP) support taken from EPIC5 for FreeBSD porters.

Source references

• Upstream commit 70a655b6 and KNOWNBUGS: October 30, 2026 changes, including authentication, regex consumers, command parsing, message splitting, and topline limits.
• Upstream revision 3107: a new JOIN replaces stale channel state after the network behind a ZNC connection reconnects.
• UPDATES: dated EPIC6 development announcements from August 2024 through October 2026.
• Repository tag epic5-2.0, source/irc.c: version name, internal release date, and commit ID; tag commit 075087c1 records the release.
• Repository commit 8390b7ef, source/irc.c and UPDATES: EPIC5 1.1.10 release identity and contemporary encoding/function changes.
• Repository commit d0ac3ed1, source/irc.c: EPIC5 1.1.8, release date 20140404, and commit ID 1775.
• Repository commits 1ed00810, 66d46a70, 82e6832d, and 7aa00123: Unicode case handling, string functions, encodingctl(), and fix_width() changes leading to those releases.