Eigenstate : Irc.myr

Irc.myr

Irc.myr is a simple IRC client for IRC. It runs in a terminal, providing a curses-line interface. It is implemented as a single Myrddin file·

https://git.eigenstate.org/ori/irc.myr.git/tree

screenshot

Irc.myr supports most basic functionality that one would expect in an IRC client, with multiple servers and channels, logging, and so on.

As usual, I'm continuing with my hubris. This tool is implemented in pure Myrddin, from the system call layer on up. The networking is implemented using the functions from libstd, documented here.

Terminal drawing is done using libtermdraw. There's no other code involved. All farm-fresh, free-range Myrddin.

To build irc.myr, I first had to finish up the dependencies. Most of what I needed was already in libstd, although I ran into a bug with my DNS resolver not recursing correctly on cname records.

The dependency that needed the most work was libtermdraw. I'd started libtermdraw seeing how far I could get with the standard ANSI escape code set, but quickly realized that ther was a lot of fairly basic functionality that wouldn't work quite right across many terminals. For example, page up and page down keys really did need terminfo. So, I wrote a terminfo parser, and hooked it in.

Terminfo format strings are crazy. They're stack machines, complete with branching and persistent registers. There's a good rant or two in there.

From there, it was all pretty smooth sailing. The subset of the IRC protocol I care about is simple, and it's easy to implement a client.

As of November 15, 2017, I have switched to using irc.myr as my only IRC client, replacing irssi fully.

Configuration

Irc.myr runs ~/.ircrc when you start it. ~/.ircrc contains a list of commands, as would be typed in directly at the command line.

/connect irc.eigenstate.org
/nick Ori
/join #myrddin eigenstate
/connect irc.freenode.org
/nick Ori_B
/msg NickServ -srv freenode identify my-pass0rd
/join #proglangdesign freenode
/join #cat-v freenode
/join #more-channels

Controls

Irc.myr has them.

Commands

/help [cmd...]:       Get help [on cmd...]
/connect dialstr:     Connect to server
/quit:                Exit irc.myr
/join chan [srv]:     Join channel on server
/leave [chan]:        Leave current channel
/chan name:           switch to channnel 'name'
/win name:            switch to channnel 'name'
/names:               List nicks in current channel
/srv srv              Set the focus to srv
/msg [-srv srv] nick  Send nick a message, optionally on server
/nick name            Set your nick name
/user name            Set your user name

Key bindings

ctrl+n            Focus next channel
ctrl+p            Focus previous channel
ctrl+l            Refresh screen
up arrow          Scroll up one line
down arrow        Scroll down one line
page up key       Scroll up one page
page down key     Scroll down one page

Input editing

ctrl+a            Move cursor to start of line
ctrl+e            Move cursor to end of line
ctrl+u            Kill current line
ctrl+y            Paste last killed line
ctrl+w            Kill word before cursor
Home              Move to start of line
End               Move to end of line
Backspace         Same as everything else

Building and Installing

First, you will need a working myrddin installation. irc.myr is developed against the git version of myrddin, so will need to install that, as described here. For clarity, the instructions are repeated here:

git clone git://git.eigensatate.org/ori/mc.git
cd mc
make
sudo make install

Build and install the terminal drawing library:

git clone git://git.eigenstate.org/npnth/libtermdraw.git
cd libtermdraw
mbld
sudo mbld install

Then build and install irc.myr:

git clone git://git.eigenstate.org/ori/irc.myr.git
cd irc.myr
mbld
sudo mbld install

Then, you run it:

irc.myr

Bugs