tiny - Yet another console IRC client

tiny is an IRC client written in Rust.

tiny in action

Features

Clean UI: consecutive join/part/quit messages are shown in a single line, time stamps for a message is omitted if it's the same as the message before. (inspired by irc-core)
All mentions to the user are collected in a "mentions" tab, including server and channel information. "mentions" tab solves the problem of missing mentions to you in channels after hours of inactivity.
Mentions to the user in a channel is highlighted (the channel tab is also highlighted in the tab list)
Simple config file format for automatically connecting to servers, joining channels, registering the nickname etc. See configuration section below.
Nick tab-completion in channels
Nicks in channels are colored.
Disconnect detection and automatic reconnects. You can keep tiny running on your laptop and it automatically reconnects after a sleep etc.
Key bindings inspired by terminal emulators and vim. See key bindings section below.
Configurable colors
SASL authentication
Configurable desktop notifications on new messages
znc compatible

Installation

Install the Rust nightly toolchain, clone the repo, and run cargo install (or cargo install --force if you already have an older version installed).

Arch Linux users can use this PKGBUILD to install tiny as a package. Download it into an empty directory, run makepkg and install the resulting .pkg.tar.xz with sudo pacman -U.

Since version 0.3.0 tiny needs OpenSSL or LibreSSL headers and runtime libraries. See rust-openssl's README for instructions on installing them.

Dependencies

OpenSSL or LibreSSL
libdbus [Linux only]

tiny is tested on Linux and OSX.

Configuration

When tiny couldn't find a config file at ~/.tinyrc.yml it creates one with some defaults and exits. Edit that file before re-running tiny to change the defaults. If you want to create the file yourself, the default file looks like this:

# Servers to auto-connect
servers:
    - addr: irc.mozilla.org
      port: 6697
      # optional field, defaults to false:
      tls: true
      # optional field for server password:
      # pass: 'server_pass'
      hostname: yourhost
      realname: yourname
      nicks: [tiny_user]
      # optional SASL authentication
      # sasl:
      #   username: 'tiny_user'
      #   password: 'hunter2'
      auto_cmds:
          - 'msg NickServ identify hunter2'
          - 'join #tiny'

# Defaults used when connecting to a server via the /connect command
defaults:
    nicks: [tiny_user]
    hostname: yourhost
    realname: yourname
    auto_cmds: []

# Where to put log files
log_dir: '/home/$USER/tiny_logs'

# <Color scheme configuration>

A note on nick identification: Some IRC servers such as ircd-seven (used by Freenode) and InspIRCd (used by Mozilla) support identification via the PASS command. This way of identification (rather than sending a message to a service like NickServ) is better when some of the channels that you automatically join (by adding a join command to auto_cmds) require identification. To use this method enter your nick password to the pass field in servers.

Command line arguments

By default (i.e. when no command line arguments passed) tiny connects to all servers listed in the config. tiny considers command line arguments as patterns to be matched in server addresses, so you can pass command line arguments to connect to only a subset of servers specified in the config. For example, in this config:

servers:
    - addr: irc.mozilla.org
      ...

    - addr: chat.freenode.net
      ...

By default tiny connects to both servers. You can connect to only the second server by passing freenode as a command line argument.

You can use --config <path> to specify your config file location.

Key bindings

C-a/C-e to move cursor beginning/end in the input field
C-k for deleting rest of the line
C-w for deleting a word
C-left/C-right for moving one word backward/forward
page up/page down or shift-up/shift-down or for scrolling
C-n/C-p for next/previous tab
C-c enter to quit.
alt-{1,9} switch to nth tab
alt-{char} switch to next tab with underlined char
alt-0 switch to last tab
alt-left/right move tab to left/right

Commands

Commands start with / character.

/msg <nick> <message>: Send a message to a user. Creates a new tab.
/join <channel>: Join to a channel
/close: Close the current tab. Leaves the channel if the current tab is a channel. Leaves the server if the tab is a server.
/connect <hostname>:<port>: Connect to a server. Uses defaults in the config file for nick, realname, hostname and auto cmds.
/connect: Reconnect to the current server. Use if you don't want to wait tiny to reconnect automatically after a connectivity problem.
/away <msg>: Set away status
/away: Remove away status
/nick <nick>: Change nick
/names: List all nicks in the current channel. You can use /names <nick> to check if a specific nick is in the channel.
/reload: Reload configuration
/clear: Clears tab contents
/switch <string>: Switch to the first tab which has the given string in the name.
/ignore: Ignore join/quit messages in a channel. When enabled channel name will have [i] added to the end to show that it is enabled. Running this command in a server tab applies it to all channels of that server.
/notify [off|mentions|messages]: Enable and disable desktop notifications. You can use /notify command without any arguments to see the current mode. Running this command in a server tab applies it to all channels of that server.

Development

tiny is in early stages of development. Some of features that you might think are essential may be missing. Please open an issue for those features (or even better, a pull request!). Remember to add yourself to the list of contributors if you submit a pull request.

Being a Rust n00b, I spent a lot of time trying to convince borrow checker, failing at that, and either adding bunch of ugly hacks (e.g. instead a loop that modifies single element implementing a loop that finds an index and modifying that index after the loop), or using a simpler but less efficient code (e.g. cloning things redundantly to avoid borrow checking). Still, I think the connection manager (conn.rs) and UI parts (tui module) are not too bad. Mess is mostly in lib.rs which implements the main logic (command and message handling etc.).

Any suggestions / code reviews / pull requests are very welcome!

If you're looking to contribute, see TODOs below. If you don't know where to start, open an issue and I'd love to help.

TODOs

Paste events are ignored when string includes newline characters (\n). It'd be nice to use $EDITOR for editing multi-line pastes before sending.
Logging should be improved. Currently messages are logged in raw form in <log dir>/server_raw.log, but outgoing message are not logged. Channel logs are printed in a weird format etc.
Only a small subset of IRC messages are implemented. I don't moderate channels, so my needs are simple. For moderation commands or other commands that tiny currently doesn't support, maybe we should implement a "send raw message" command so that any user can directly send an IRC message to a server without any support from tiny.

Contributors

tiny 0.4.1