Install ircd-hybrid with Homebrew, apt, Nix, pacman

Project links

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream docs
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• ircd

Project history

The official history traces ircd-hybrid to the 1996 split that separated the original IRC network into EFnet and IRCnet, with TimeStamping used as a technical answer to nickname and channel collisions after netsplits. Hybrid grew from Taner's 2.8 +th extension, then Jon Lusky's 1997 project based on 2.8/th.v5a.3, later known as 2.8/hybrid-2.

The project released hybrid builds through 1997, with version 5 arriving in September 1997 and hybrid-6 in December 1998. The 1999 ircd-hybrid 7 branch deliberately rewrote and reorganized large parts of the 2.8-derived code, adding cleaner I/O, event and hook machinery, dynamically loaded modules, a block-oriented configuration format, OpenSSL link support, and other operator-facing features.

Adoption history

The project history says hybrid became the most popular IRC daemon on EFnet around 1998, and that the h6 branch was still used on EFnet years later. That gives the package unusual weight for an IRC daemon in Unix package indexes: it was not just a reference implementation, but an operationally deployed daemon in one of IRC's defining networks.

Homebrew, BSD ports, Debian-family packages, and other package collections have carried ircd-hybrid because running an IRC server remains a classic Unix daemon task: install a package, edit the server configuration, and supervise a long-lived network service.

How it is used

Operators use ircd-hybrid to host IRC networks or individual IRC servers. Its package shape is traditional Unix daemon software: an `ircd` executable, configuration under the package prefix, reference documentation, and service-management glue supplied by the operating system or package manager.

Why package nerds care

For package maintainers, ircd-hybrid is the sort of package that exposes the old-school IRC server maintenance surface: config-file compatibility, module loading, TLS support, daemon lifecycle, and distro-specific defaults all matter. Its long EFnet lineage also makes version history more meaningful than a simple upstream changelog.

Timeline

• 1996: The EFnet/IRCnet split made TimeStamping behavior a central IRC daemon design issue.
• 1997: Jon Lusky started the hybrid line from the 2.8/th code, and hybrid saw its first public releases.
• 1998: hybrid-6 shipped and the project became widely used on EFnet.
• 1999: Developers began the ircd-hybrid 7 rewrite branch.
• 2003: ircd-hybrid 7.0 was released after the long rewrite cycle.
• 2005: ircd-hybrid 7.1 completed much of the cleanup intended for the 7 branch.
• 2014: The GitHub project page was created as a public development surface alongside the project's own site and repository links.

Related projects

• ircd-hybrid is related to the original IRC daemon line, EFnet daemon variants, IRCnet-era protocol decisions, and HOPM, the Hybrid Open Proxy Monitor maintained under the same project umbrella.

Sources

• https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/ircd-hybrid
• https://github.com/ircd-hybrid/ircd-hybrid
• https://www.ircd-hybrid.org/history.html