HalosGhost/kirc

A tiny IRC client written in POSIX C99.

KISS for IRC, a tiny IRC client written in POSIX C99.

Objectives

"Do one thing and do it well" — Emphasis was placed on building simple, short, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed (per the Unix philosophy).

Portability — POSIX compliance ensures seamless compatibility and interoperability between variants of Unix and other operating systems.

Usability — Commands and shortcuts should feel "natural" when using a standard 104-key US keyboard layout. Where possible, the number of keystrokes have been minimized.

Usage

usage: kirc [-s hostname] [-p port] [-c channel] [-n nick] [-r real name] [-u username] [-k password] [-x init command] [-w columns] [-W columns] [-o path] [-h|v|V]
-s     server address (default: 'irc.freenode.org')
-p     server port (default: '6667')
-c     channel name (default: 'kirc')
-n     nickname (required)
-u     server username (optional)
-k     server password (optional)
-r     real name (optional)
-v     version information
-V     verbose output (e.g. raw stream)
-o     output path to log irc stream
-x     send command to irc server after inital connection
-w     maximum width of the printed left column (default: '10')
-W     maximum width of the entire printed stream (default '80')
-h     basic usage information

Features

• No dependencies other than a C99 compiler.
• Complies with RFC 2812 standard.
• Ability to log the entire chat history (see Usage section for more information).
• Simple command structure:

<message>                   Send a message to the current channel.
/m <nick|channel> <message> Send a message to a specified channel or nick.
/M <message>                Send a message to NickServ.
/Q <message>                Send a message and close the host connection.
/x <message>                Send a message directly to the server.
/j <channel>                Join a specified channel.
/p <channel>                Leave (part) a specified channel.
/u <channel>                Assign new default message channel.
/n                          List all users on the current channel.
/q                          Close the host connection.
/h                          Print a list of available kirc commands.

• Color scheme definition via ANSI 8-bit colors. Therefore, one could theoretically achieve uniform color definition across all shell applications and tools.

Screenshots

Installation

Building and installing on KISS Linux using the Community repository:

kiss b kirc
kiss i kirc

Building and installing on Arch and Arch-based distros using the AUR:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/kirc-git.git
cd kirc
makepkg -si

Building and installing from source (works on Raspbian, Debian, Ubuntu and many other Unix distributions):

git clone https://github.com/mcpcpc/kirc.git
cd kirc
make
make install

Transport Layer Security (TLS) Support

There is no native TLS/SSL support. Instead, users can achieve this functionality by using third-party tools (e.g. stunnel, socat, ghosttunnel).

• socat example:

socat -v tcp-listen:6667,reuseaddr,fork,bind=127.0.0.1 ssl:<irc-server>:669
kirc -s 127.0.0.1 -c 'channel' -n 'name' -r 'realname'

Contact

For any further questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to me on #kirc or #kisslinux channels of the irc.freenode.org server.