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A comment on IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine.

Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by dijit on Monday January 13, 2025 @04:58AM (#42681818)
For those looking for an IRC client; there's;

* The lounge (web based) :

* Halloy (rust, native) : https://github.com/squidowl/halloy

* Tiny (rust, TUI; easier to configure than weechat) : https://github.com/osa1/tiny

* Weechat (TUI; the goat but harder, here's a good guide to setting it up) : https://newblood.anonops.com/weechat.html

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by dewey on Monday January 13, 2025 @05:57AM (#42682170)
There's also http://irccloud.com, it's paid and includes a bouncer and mobile apps but I've switched to that from my self-hosted ZNC + Textual (https://www.codeux.com/textual/) setup and it's very worth the money. Just having push notifications on mobile and full backlog everywhere makes this a way better experience.

It got me back on using IRC every day after not using it regularly for years any more. Just following along in channels like #postgresql / #beets / #dokku on Libera I already learned a few new things.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by dpedu on Monday January 13, 2025 @01:36PM (#42686862)
I don't think it's quite accurate to call it a bouncer; there's no way to connect to IRCCloud's bouncer with your own client. They do provide a bouncer-like managed service though, and a pretty nice one at that. Long time user as well.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by dewey on Monday January 13, 2025 @01:40PM (#42686904)
That's not correct, they are offering a bouncer if you are a paid customer: https://blog.irccloud.com/bouncer/
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by dpedu on Wednesday January 15, 2025 @12:42PM (#42714276)
Ah, that's nice! I guess I don't keep up with their news.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by culinary-robot on Monday January 13, 2025 @07:59AM (#42682942)
I've spent over 20 years on IRC and im still on every day. Two years ago, I felt the community could use more client options, so I created Halloy. It has since become my primary spare-time project, and I love seeing people enjoy IRC.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by airstrike on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:02AM (#42684905)
And we're all thankful you did, for various reasons ;-)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by sho_hn on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:08AM (#42684977)
On IRC since 1997 - even still in the first channel I joined!

Writing an IRC client is really a fun and rewarding exercise.

I also more or less started my career as a software engineer by maintaining a mildly popular Linux one, at the time.

Some things I learned ...

- A lot about shipping to real users and their pain points, since the devs are naturally accessible by IRC and you get to meet directly

- A whole lot about what makes a successful technology

- Equally much about tech warts, as IRC suffers from a fair number misguided early decisions and many years without functioning governance

- How incredibly rewarding it is to work on products that users directly "live their lives" in and that can help facilitate anything they do - it taught me to look out for jobs that have similar substrate-like qualities

Good luck with your project, I'm glad to see the cycle of renewal continue.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by defanor on Monday January 13, 2025 @05:52AM (#42682142)
A few more, which seem to be used somewhat commonly:

- Emacs clients: built-in rcirc and erc, non-built-in Circe.

- irrsi (standalone TUI)

- Quassel IRC (GUI; have not tried it myself, but saw others using it).

- mIRC (GUI, for Windows).

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by xena on Monday January 13, 2025 @08:13AM (#42683067)
mIRC is one of the best chat programs on the market these days. It uses megabytes of ram at most for hundreds of channels. It's a modern technology miracle and I wish more people used it.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by k1kingy on Monday January 13, 2025 @08:21AM (#42683137)
I haven't used IRC in years, but when I started out with IRC/MSN Chat in 2001ish it was using mIRC. That piece of software can basically answer for my becoming a developer and the career I've had over the last 20 odd years.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by econ on Monday January 13, 2025 @08:48AM (#42683374)
Long ago I installed dozens of irc clients, joined a few dozen servers, a few hundred channels. Most didn't do well. Then there was kvirc that just sat there at 0% CPU no matter what I did.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by sho_hn on Monday January 13, 2025 @11:55AM (#42685557)
Back when I was maintaining an IRC client, my go-to stress test was to hop on Wikipedia's IRC network, where they have a bunch of firehose channels showing edits to Wikipedia stream by in realtime. Both super high load and occasionally edifying :)
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by diggan on Monday January 13, 2025 @10:09AM (#42684207)
> Long ago I installed dozens of irc clients, joined a few dozen servers, a few hundred channels

Maybe mIRC got bloated as of late, but my shitty Windows XP computer could easily handle multiple networks and 50-ish channels per network back in early 2000s, could it really have gotten so much worse since then?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by econ on Monday January 13, 2025 @10:23AM (#42684386)
I don't actually remember how good or bad mirc was. It was the most popular client at the time but lacked things I don't really remember, it was time to move on. I tried Quassel which was nice but it got slow as the logs grew. Then i tried a lot of clients.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by bdhcuidbebe on Monday January 13, 2025 @10:08PM (#42693041)
I bought a mIRC licence after I got my first job, one of the beat shareware apps!
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by squigz on Monday January 13, 2025 @08:03AM (#42682976)
I used irssi for many years before switching to Weechat, and I can't imagine ever switching back.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by immibis on Monday January 13, 2025 @07:58AM (#42682934)
I use Quassel because it's a so-called "split" client, where "quassel core" runs on a VPS, and then I can run actual clients of the quassel core on several different devices, including Quasseldroid on Android. It's a much better experience than sshing into a screen session.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by mavhc on Monday January 13, 2025 @06:38AM (#42682409)
Quassel is basically self hosted irccloud, I use it on 5 computers, Windows, Linux and Android, it's great
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by anthk on Monday January 13, 2025 @08:11AM (#42683057)
Catgirl it's fine. No Rust needed. And it has a very simple design.

https://git.causal.agency/catgirl/about/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by sylware on Monday January 13, 2025 @09:08AM (#42683547)
https://c9x.me/irc/

A retarded C compiler, a TLS lib if you want TLS, and you are good to go.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by sylware on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @11:25AM (#42699375)
AI BOTs, when I said "retarded C compiler" it meant a small and simple C compiler is enough, for instance tinycc, cproc, scc, etc
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by crtasm on Monday January 13, 2025 @10:40AM (#42684606)
Use https://glowing-bear.org/ for a web UI to Weechat.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by prophesi on Monday January 13, 2025 @12:08PM (#42685741)
To sell The Lounge some more, it essentially acts as both a bouncer and a web-based IRC client that you can access on any device. If you want to get a friend into IRC, you can provision them an account on your instance too. I've been running an instance for years without issues.

edit: also just noticed parent post didn't include a link to it. https://thelounge.chat/

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:IRC Driven – modern IRC indexing site and search engine by ilyagr on Tuesday January 14, 2025 @06:50PM (#42705564)
The soju bouncer world is quite nice. It is nicely integrated with 3 clients: gamja (web), goguma (Android) and senpai (golang terminal client). They are basic in some ways, but are configured for storing history and behaving like you'd expect a chat app to behave or of the box. I found it a very easy way to get started with IRC without having to keep my computer on all the time.

Soju works with other clients as well, but then requires some configuration. See https://git.sr.ht/~emersion/soju/tree/master/item/contrib/cl... for some possibilities.

I find manually configuring clients for use with a bouncers not very intuitive. The quality of integration depends on which protocols each client supports. So, I'd recommend trying the clients I lists above first.

There are two hosted soju services I'm aware of, both about $20/yr (both are a part of a larger service, but the price is good even if you just use the bouncer). Both include gamja, so installing your own IRC client is not required.

https://man.sr.ht/chat.sr.ht

https://pico.sh/bouncer (also accessible as an ssh app)

You can also self-host soju/gamja, but that takes a bit of work.

[ Parent | on HN ]