
Irssi 1.0.0 Released - raimue
https://irssi.org/2017/01/05/irssi-1.0.0-released/
======
jdcarter
Happy to see IRC still going strong. While I switched to irccloud.com a couple
years ago--persistent session is so nice, especially for mobile!--I used CLI
clients for years before.

Amusing blast from the past: back in the 90's I worked at General Magic, and
wrote my own IRC client [1] for our handheld devices. I attached a Metricom
wireless modem to the bottom of mine and could be on IRC from _anywhere_ ; it
was like living in the future! /s

[1]:
[http://joshcarter.com/magic_cap/cujochat](http://joshcarter.com/magic_cap/cujochat)

~~~
ticoombs
Why but just run a bouncer like znc?

I even have push notifications when I get tagged or a add a special keyword.

~~~
fredsir
Is it push notifications as in notifications pushed to your android/ios
device? If so, how did you set it up?

~~~
BHSPitMonkey
I run a persistent irssi session accessible via SSH on a RPi at home, and I
use this awesome irssi script + Android app to get push notifications for
PMs/mentions:
[https://irssinotifier.appspot.com/](https://irssinotifier.appspot.com/)

~~~
atomi
I do the same with an rpi/docker container. There is a pushbullet script too
if you're interested.

------
vesinisa
Heh, great! And only 17 years in development!

First commit:
[https://github.com/irssi/irssi/commit/770ae45](https://github.com/irssi/irssi/commit/770ae45)

~~~
DoodleBuggy
Right on schedule!

Time to finally switch from ircII?? /s

~~~
na85
You know, sometimes there's an argument for taking the slow and steady
approach.

I know it doesn't always jive with the current fad of "move fast, throw in a
bunch of js and break things" where everything is obsolete by the time it's
released, but there's frankly no need for irssi development to proceed at an
urgent pace. The 0.x versions were perfectly usable.

~~~
DoodleBuggy
I agree given the project and the usability of prior releases, but you have to
admit a 17 year schedule is amusing in todays world.

~~~
na85
>you have to admit a 17 year schedule is amusing in todays world

No I don't.

~~~
DoodleBuggy
Oh ok, 16 year schedule, that's amusing. 17? No. 18? Nope.

------
hannob
This release fixes a couple of vulnerabilities, some of them found via
fuzzing:
[https://irssi.org/security/irssi_sa_2017_01.txt](https://irssi.org/security/irssi_sa_2017_01.txt)

I hope I'll find time to write up a blogpost how I fuzzed irssi later.

~~~
hannob
Here's the blog post:

[https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/55-Fuzzing-Irssi-with-
Perl-...](https://blog.fuzzing-project.org/55-Fuzzing-Irssi-with-Perl-
Scripts.html)

------
gargarplex
For those interested in consulting, IRC is a great way to find clients. You
can both contribute your expertise and socialize and network with developers
who specialize in technologies that you know well. I've found a great number
of contractors through IRC (especially freenode). The fact that it requires a
modicum of tech cred to navigate makes it a bit of a self-selecting pool,
which is great.

~~~
foo101
For those of us who have not yet cracked the technique of finding clients via
IRC, could you please share the name of a few channels where you could network
and find clients?

~~~
gargarplex
Hang out in the channels associated with languages where you have expertise.
If you're a php expert, contribute technical expertise in ##php and socialize
in #phpc. And so forth. There's a list of channels here:
[http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/?net=freenode](http://irc.netsplit.de/channels/?net=freenode)

My book (link in profile) offers a free chapter on finding clients if you sign
up for the mailing list. IRC is discussed in depth.

------
baldfat
> Binary test packages for various Linux distributions are automatically
> generated by the openSUSE Build Service

The most underused Linux service to the rest of the community. So glad they
are using this.

~~~
cyphar
For those who don't know, the Open Build Service is a project mainly
maintained by the openSUSE community. Aside from building _all_ of the
packages for openSUSE and SUSE's enterprise distributions, it also can build
Ubuntu, Debian, Arch Linux, Red Hat and Fedora packages. It also has a
collaboration system which is the primary way that openSUSE and SUSE Linux
Enterprise are built.

[Disclaimer: I work for SUSE and am an openSUSE contributor.]

~~~
ComodoHacker
Is there a similar service (paid perhaps) to build for macOS?

~~~
baldfat
[https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_comparison](https://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Build_Service_comparison)

> Support for any OS and architecture due to the use of VM's for building the
> packages. This includes Windows (experimental) and Mac OS X (if anyone would
> want to work on that).

------
josteink
I've moved to weechat these days, but I'm glad to see the revived project
making progress.

Irsii was my daily communications hero for many years.

~~~
kqr
I agree. I've been silently (and sometimes loudly...) groaning when I hear my
friends start using Irssi back when it was still completely unmaintained.
There's something nice about sometimes upgrading your software and actually
getting surprised by new, useful features as well as security patches, which
didn't happen with Irssi until very recently.

------
itp
I feel like I just discovered the Coelacanth isn't actually extinct. I
initially assumed either:

1) I misread the name of something that merely looked like irssi, or 2) there
was a new project names irssi that unfortunately used a name of a much older
project.

There was a several year period of my life where the vast majority of my
online communication took place inside irssi. And that time was not
particularly recent!

Congrats to the team, awesome to see it still going.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
> _I feel like I just discovered the Coelacanth isn 't actually extinct._

Nah, that's when you hear BitchX has done a new release.

~~~
wyclif
Gosh, BitchX. Now there's something I have fond memories of. I wonder where
panasync is now?

~~~
caf
He's into computer-aided manufacturing these days.

------
m-p-3
Interesting, I just learned that one of the developer (Kenny Root) also
develops the ConnectBot Android app (SSH Client)!

------
burchr
Congrats to the team! Long time irssi user here, I've tried to move to several
other clients over the years (for change's sake rather than any real reason),
but nothing ever "stuck" with me.

Relatedly to this happy news, a gentle plug for a project I was involved in:
[https://github.com/rburchell/irssi-relay](https://github.com/rburchell/irssi-
relay)

irssi-relay allows you to connect weechat's relay clients to an irssi
instance. I don't think it's gotten much use outside the few of us that work
on it, more eyes are of course welcome.

~~~
Foxboron
Wow. I just have to say thank you. I love irssi, but the hassle of sshing from
my phone has been an issue. This solved everything. the glowing bear phone app
works great, but i couldnt get the weechat android app to work.

Thanks!

~~~
burchr
I think it was working at some point, but I don't regularly use Android, so I
don't know what might have changed there.

Please file an issue if you don't mind (and if you can dig in and try to find
the problem or even fix it, so much the better!)

------
yegle
It's pity that Irssi only support Perl as its scripting language. In contrast,
[https://weechat.org/](https://weechat.org/) support:
Python/Perl/Ruby/lua/tcl/guile/Javascript.

UPDATE: I stand corrected.

~~~
systems
it is just a chat client why does it need to support all those languages

i understand that Perl5, isn't really exciting anymore

but .. i think it's ok

~~~
yegle
IRC client is useless without a certain degree of extensibility. Having a wide
range of scripting language support is important IMO.

~~~
jimktrains2
But you can extend it. I know that recently vim has added python support, but
people used vim script to do amazing things, and look at the OS we know as
emacs.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
> recently vim has added python support

Sorry if this makes you feel old, but that's a literal decade ago.

~~~
jimktrains2
git's also over a decade old :(

Man, I _am_ old.

------
akulbe
Social networks come and go... but IRC lasts forever! :)

I've tried sooooo many different IRC clients. I _always_ end up coming back to
irssi.

------
lacampbell
Can anyone compare it to weechat? Never used irssi but weechat is my client of
choice these days since my old client fell victim to the whole gtk2/gtk3
thing.

~~~
godmodus
Apples and oranges - wee Is gui. Irssi is cli.

It's "wee" \- so it's minimal. Does a good job for its niche.

Cli chat clients are more flexible, with all the complexity that brings with
it - but they're usually robust. Command line graphics don't change much :)

gui ones less so, but learning curve is not as steep. That said Xchat is hard
to compare to weechat again, as it's a full fledged gui IRC client, rather
than a minimal one. (multi network, multi server, dcc/xdcc and scriptability)
and it's robust in its own niche.

Been using irssi for years now, and can't say I know/utilise all it offers,
but it's great to log in to my server and screen -x into my irssi session.

~~~
jorams
I'm not sure which WeeChat you're comparing to, but practically nothing you
said applies to the weechat I know[1]. It's primary interface is a CLI one, it
is incredibly flexible, and it's a full fledged IRC client with every single
feature you listed.

[1]: [https://weechat.org/](https://weechat.org/)

~~~
godmodus
Hmm, you're right. I had a different client in mind and confused the two -
can't remember what it was called now, tried to Google but it might have died
along time ago.

Hell even xchat is now hexchat. Weechat seems to be a pretty good client.

The nick list on the side does have its drawbacks when it comes to small
screen realestate- but for a newbie (and beyond really. It seems to be very
extedable) Friendly client it's impressive.

------
gourneau
If you are looking for Irssi with a very nice native OS X interface make sure
to checkout MacIrssi
[https://github.com/Dakta/MacIrssi](https://github.com/Dakta/MacIrssi)

------
hiphopyo
Ofcourse Irssi wouldn't be complete without its ircII minimalist theme:

[https://github.com/irssi/irssi/pull/181/commits/0494925a465b...](https://github.com/irssi/irssi/pull/181/commits/0494925a465b2394dacd78b014d002ffd9d22b31)

Also, +1 for Ruby support.

------
0x0
It also comes with security fixes that were simultaneously released as a
0.8.21 bugfix-only release:

[https://irssi.org/security/irssi_sa_2017_01.txt](https://irssi.org/security/irssi_sa_2017_01.txt)

------
Aardwolf
Funny, I was using that more than 10 years ago! My source of archlinux support
when KDE didn't work.

Now we got phones with internet though, so it's no longer that hard to look up
stuff when your computer is half down :)

------
marsrover
Wow, I would have guessed Irssi passed version 1.0.0 a long long time ago.
I've been using it at least 10 years and it's a great and stable application.

I guess that goes to show how much I pay attention to versions.

------
coldpie
I'm glad to see another project dropping the meaningless major version
number(s). If you don't have a criteria for incrementing the major number,
just drop it. This seems to finally be catching on, hopefully we'll see the
billion open source projects with meaningless "0." continue to fall off.

~~~
simias
The problem is that when you start a new project you definitely don't want to
start at 1.0 and give people the impression that it's already working. Then
when do you decide to go 1.0 if you keep adding features and moving the
goalpost? That's kind of tricky for open source projects that don't have
commercial releases.

~~~
coldpie
If you have release criteria, sure, bump to 1.0 when you hit them. But if you
don't have release criteria, just name it 1.0 and go from there. Version
numbers don't matter as much as people think they do. This way we can avoid
people having to type "0.7", "0.8" etc for 17 years instead of just "7" and
"8".

~~~
yiyus
I have been an irssi user for almost 15 years and I don't remember having
typed the version number even once. Indeed, it does not matter so much as some
people think.

------
josteink
Are there any good irssi/weechat relay clients for iPhone or do I just have to
live with that this phone sucks for geeky things like IRC?

I certainly can't seem to find anything in the istore...

Coming from android, that was such a surprise, and similarly, a massive
downer.

------
petre
I used Irssi 15 years ago. Back then they announced a rewrite that was to
become 1.0.

------
eof
neat. I've been using irssi for half a decade. Never realized it was <1.0

------
sevensor
Today's XKCD celebrates IRC: [http://xkcd.com/1782/](http://xkcd.com/1782/)

------
fivre
long live xircon!

all said, duck yeah, irssi remains one of my fav pieces of software. watching
the rise of slack and so forth has been quite amusing to me, as a longtime irc
chick. my barometer for new chat networks being good or not is "can i somehow
use it in irssi?"

awaiting a good and proper discord-irc bridge to make up for all the funtimes
tryin to make twitch/ustream/hitbox chat work via irc.

------
tomc1985
BitchX forever!! :P

(seriously though, not really, I could never figure out how to actually use
that client)

~~~
phusion
BitchX isn't that hard, it's got all the ircII stuff plus a few changes to how
you do a few things. I used graphical IRC clients for years until I started
working more and switched around devices too much. I'm not a fan of ZNC/BNC,
so now I have a few VPS's for plex and storage that I just have irssi running
inside of a screen and it works great.

I stopped using BX after a few IRC friends badgered me into switching to irssi
and I haven't looked back. I'm on IRC every day and the VPS -> screen -> irssi
config has worked for years, so I'm sticking to it.

~~~
powmonk
Any reason you're using screen over tmux? I'm trying to decide which way to go
at the moment

------
hsivonen
Did seccomp sandboxing make it to this release? (Not in the highlights
listed.)

~~~
caf
I'm not sure seccomp sandboxing makes a great deal of sense when the process
is supposed to be able to host arbitrary perl script.

------
huxflux
The best irc-client ever! I love this client so much.

------
StreamBright
Just about time.

------
amckinlay
Still no vertically split windows?

------
jwilm
Does irssi proxy support TLS yet?

