path: root/README.adoc

uirc3
=====
:compact-option:

The [line-through]#unethical# edgy IRC trinity.  This project consists of an
experimental IRC client, daemon, and bot.  It's all you're ever going to need
for chatting, as long as you can make do with minimalist software.

All of them have these potentially interesting properties:

 - IPv6 support
 - TLS support, including client certificates
 - lean on dependencies (with the exception of 'degesch')
 - compact and arguably easy to hack on
 - very permissive license

degesch
-------
The IRC client.  It is largely defined by being built on top of GNU Readline
that has been hacked to death.  Its interface should feel somewhat familiar for
weechat or irssi users.

image::degesch.png[align="center"]

This is the largest application within the project.  It has most of the stuff
you'd expect of an IRC client, such as being able to set up multiple servers,
a powerful configuration system, integrated help, text formatting, CTCP queries,
automatic splitting of overlong messages, autocomplete, logging to file,
auto-away, command aliases and basic support for Lua scripting.

kike
----
The IRC daemon.  It is designed to be used as a regular user application rather
than a system-wide daemon.  If all you want is a decent, minimal IRCd for
testing purposes or a small network of respectful users (or bots), this one will
do it just fine.

Notable features:

 - TLS autodetection (why doesn't everyone have this?), using secure defaults
 - IRCop authentication via TLS client certificates
 - epoll/kqueue support; this means that it should be able to handle quite
   a number of concurrent user connections
 - partial IRCv3 support

Not supported:

 - server linking (which also means no services); I consider existing protocols
   for this purpose ugly and tricky to implement correctly; I've also found no
   use for this feature yet
 - online changes to configuration; the configuration system from degesch could
   be used to implement this feature if needed
 - limits of almost any kind, just connections and mode `+l`

This program has been https://git.janouch.name/p/haven/src/branch/master/hid[
ported to Go], and development continues over there.

ZyklonB
-------
The IRC bot.  It builds upon the concept of my other VitaminA IRC bot.  The main
characteristic of these two bots is that they run plugins as coprocesses, which
allows for enhanced reliability and programming language freedom.

While originally intended to be a simple rewrite of the original AWK bot in C,
it fairly quickly became a playground, and it eventually got me into writing
the rest of the package.

It survives crashes, server disconnects and timeouts, and also has native SOCKS
support (even though socksify can add that easily to any program).

Packages
--------
Regular releases are sporadic.  git master should be stable enough.  You can get
a package with the latest development version from Archlinux's AUR.

Building
--------
Build dependencies: CMake, pkg-config, help2man, awk, sh, liberty (included) +
Runtime dependencies: openssl +
Additionally for degesch: curses, libffi, lua >= 5.3 (optional),
                          readline >= 6.0 or libedit >= 2013-07-12

Avoid libedit if you can, in general it works but at the moment history is
acting up and I have no clue about fixing it.

 $ git clone --recursive https://git.janouch.name/p/uirc3.git
 $ mkdir uirc3/build
 $ cd uirc3/build
 $ cmake .. -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug \
            -DWANT_READLINE=ON -DWANT_LIBEDIT=OFF -DWANT_LUA=ON
 $ make

To install the application, you can do either the usual:

 # make install

Or you can try telling CMake to make a package for you.  For Debian it is:

 $ cpack -G DEB
 # dpkg -i uirc3-*.deb

Usage
-----
'degesch' has in-program configuration.  Just run it and read the instructions.

For the rest you might want to generate a configuration file:

 $ zyklonb --write-default-config
 $ kike --write-default-config

After making any necessary edits to the file (there are comments to aid you in
doing that), simply run the appropriate program with no arguments:

 $ zyklonb
 $ kike

'ZyklonB' stays running in the foreground, therefore I recommend launching it
inside a Screen or tmux session.

'kike', on the other hand, immediately forks into the background.  Use the PID
file or something like `killall` if you want to terminate it.  You can run it
as a `forking` type systemd user service.

Client Certificates
-------------------
'kike' uses SHA1 fingerprints of TLS client certificates to authenticate users.
To get the fingerprint from a certificate file in the required form, use:

 $ openssl x509 -in public.pem -outform DER | sha1sum

Custom Key Bindings in degesch
------------------------------
The default and preferred frontend used in 'degesch' is GNU Readline.  This
means that you can change your bindings by editing '~/.inputrc'.  For example:
....
# Preload with system-wide settings
$include /etc/inputrc

# Make M-left and M-right reorder buffers
$if degesch
"\e\e[C": move-buffer-right
"\e\e[D": move-buffer-left
$endif
....
Consult the source code and the GNU Readline manual for a list of available
functions.  Also refer to the latter for the exact syntax of this file.
Beware that you can easily break the program if you're not careful.

How do I make degesch look like the screenshot?
-----------------------------------------------
First of all, you must build it with Lua support.  With the defaults, degesch
doesn't look very fancy because some things are rather hackish, and I also don't
want to depend on UTF-8 or 256color terminals in the code.  In addition to that,
I appear to be one of the few people who use black on white terminals.

 /set behaviour.date_change_line = "%a %e %b %Y"
 /set behaviour.plugin_autoload += "fancy-prompt.lua,thin-cursor.lua"
 /set behaviour.backlog_helper = "LESSSECURE=1 less -R +Gb -Ps'Backlog ?ltlines %lt-%lb?L/%L. .?e(END):?pB%pB\\%..'"
 /set behaviour.backlog_helper_strip_formatting = off
 /set attributes.reset = "\x1b[0m"
 /set attributes.userhost = "\x1b[38;5;109m"
 /set attributes.join = "\x1b[38;5;108m"
 /set attributes.part = "\x1b[38;5;138m"
 /set attributes.external = "\x1b[38;5;248m"
 /set attributes.timestamp = "\x1b[48;5;255m\x1b[38;5;250m"

Configuration profiles
----------------------
Even though the applications don't directly support configuration profiles,
they conform to the XDG standard, and thus you can change the location they
load configuration from via XDG_CONFIG_HOME (normally '~/.config') and the
location where store their data via XDG_DATA_HOME (normally '~/.local/share').

It would be relatively easy to make the applications assume whatever name you
run them under (for example by using symbolic links), and load different
configurations accordingly, but I consider it rather messy and unnecessary.

Contributing and Support
------------------------
Use https://git.janouch.name/p/uirc3 to report any bugs, request features,
or submit pull requests.  `git send-email` is tolerated.  If you want to discuss
the project, feel free to join me at ircs://irc.janouch.name, channel #dev.

Bitcoin donations are accepted at: 12r5uEWEgcHC46xd64tt3hHt9EUvYYDHe9

License
-------
This software is released under the terms of the 0BSD license, the text of which
is included within the package along with the list of authors.

Note that 'degesch' technically becomes GPL-licensed when you statically link it
against GNU Readline, but that is not a concern of this source package.