Circe, a Client for IRC in Emacs

Overview

Circe is a Client for IRC in Emacs. It tries to have sane defaults, and integrates well with the rest of the editor, using standard Emacs key bindings and indicating activity in channels in the status bar so it stays out of your way unless you want to use it.

Complexity-wise, it is somewhere between rcirc (very minimal) and ERC (very complex).

Screenshot

Installation

`package.el`

Make sure you have MELPA Stable added to your package sources. To your .emacs, add this:

(require 'package)
(add-to-list 'package-archives
             '("melpa-stable" . "http://stable.melpa.org/packages/") t)
(package-initialize)

Then, use package-install to install Circe:

M-x package-install RET circe RET

After this, M-x circe should work.

Development Version

In a shell:

mkdir -d ~/.emacs.d/lisp/
cd ~/.emacs.d/lisp
git clone git://github.com/jorgenschaefer/circe.git

Then add the following to your .emacs file:

(add-to-list 'load-path "~/.emacs.d/lisp/circe")
(require 'circe)

The next time you start your Emacs, you should be able to use M-x circe to connect to IRC.

Connecting to IRC

To connect to IRC, simply use M-x circe RET irc.freenode.net RET RET. This will connect you to Freenode. You can join us on #emacs-circe by using /join #emacs-circe in the server buffer.

A more elaborate setup would require you to edit your init file and add something like the following:

(setq circe-network-options
      '(("Freenode"
         :tls t
         :nick "my-nick"
         :sasl-username "my-nick"
         :sasl-password "my-password"
         :channels ("#emacs-circe")
         )))

With this in your configuration, you can use M-x circe RET Freenode RET to connect to Freenode using these settings.

Please note: Circe uses the openssl or gnutls-cli command line programs to connect via TLS. These tools do not by default verify the server certificate. If you want to verify the server certificate, customize the tls-connection-command variable.

Features

Sensible defaults
Tab completion
Nick highlighting
Logging
Spell checker
Ignore feature that also hides users who talk to users on your ignore list
Ignored messages can be toggled so they show up and then hidden again
TLS/SSL support
SASL authentication support
Nickserv authentication, automatic ghosting, and nick re-gain
Auto-join
Ability to reduce join/part/quit spam from lurkers
Automatic splitting of long lines at word boundaries
Netsplit handling
Activity tracking in the mode line
Fully customizeable message display
Topic changes can be shown as a diff
Automatic linking of Emacs Lisp symbols, RFCs, PEPs, SRFIs, Github issues, etc.
Automatic splitting of outgoing messages at word boundaries to adhere to IRC protocol limitations
Flood protection
Nickname coloring (via the circe-color-nicks module)
Lag monitoring (via the circe-lagmon module)
Automatic pasting to a paste site for long messages (via the lui-autopaste module)
Bar marking the last read position (via the lui-track-bar module)

Documentation

Please see the Wiki for further information:

https://github.com/jorgenschaefer/circe/wiki

jdz/circe