WeeChat

WeeChat (Wee Enhanced Environment for Chat) is a free and open-source Internet Relay Chat client, which is designed to be light and fast. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License 3 and has been developed since 2003.

WeeChat

WeeChat 0.3.2 with the default configuration and the buffers.pl script in use
Developer(s)	Sébastien Helleu
Initial release	June 26, 2003
Stable release	3.0.1 (January 31, 2021[1]) [±]
Preview release	3.1-dev[2]
Repository	github.com/weechat/weechat
Written in	C
Operating system	Linux, BSD, OS X, GNU Hurd, Microsoft Windows (using Cygwin)
Size	17.2 MB
Available in	13 languages[3]
Type	IRC client
License	GPLv3
Website	weechat.org

WeeChat comes with a default ncurses interface, but through the use of the relay plugin, it is possible to use other interfaces[4] (e.g. Glowing Bear,[5] a web frontend).

Features

WeeChat's features include:[6]

• IPv6
• SSL
• Proxy connections
• The screen can be split up to display multiple windows at the same time.
• Incremental text search
• Aspell support for spell checking
• Scripting support for many languages (Perl, Python, Ruby, Lua, Tcl, Scheme with GNU Guile, JavaScript with V8 (JavaScript engine), PHP)
• FIFO pipes for remote control
• Support for multiple character encodings
• User-defined aliases and shortkeys

Supported platforms

WeeChat supports most platforms and operating systems, including Linux, BSD, macOS, Debian GNU/Hurd, HP-UX, Solaris, QNX, Haiku, and Microsoft Windows (via the Cygwin library and API).[7]

Binary packages and builds of WeeChat are available for installation as well as the source code for self compilation.[8] This includes most Linux distributions and BSD package management systems, such as Debian,[9] Ubuntu,[10] Mandriva Linux,[11] Fedora,[12] Gentoo Linux,[13] Arch Linux,[14] FreeBSD via the FreeBSD Ports system, OpenBSD via the Ports collection, as well on NetBSD via Pkgsrc.[15]

Reception

In his review for Free Software Magazine, Martin Brown graded WeeChat with 43 points out of a possible 50, noting that "At first glance, WeeChat is not as friendly or easy to use as Rhapsody", but, "There’s a lot of hidden power built into the application", including Python, Perl, Ruby and Lua extensions which can be selected at installation.[16]

See also

• Comparison of Internet Relay Chat clients
• List of Internet Relay Chat commands
• irssi

References

1. "Version 3.0.1". weechat.org. Retrieved 2021-01-31.
2. "WeeChat, the extensible chat client". Retrieved 2020-11-11.
3. "WeeChat translations". WeeChat. Retrieved 2020-07-18.
4. Helleu, Sébastien. "WeeChat user's guide". weechat.org. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
5. "Glowing Bear - A web client for WeeChat". github.com. glowing-bear.org. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
6. "WeeChat :: about :: Features". weechat.org. Retrieved 2014-01-28.
7. "WeeChat in Cygwin". weechat.org. 2013-10-19. Retrieved 2014-08-06.
8. "WeeChat: Downloads". weechat.org. 2009-03-04. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
9. "Debian: WeeChat packages". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
10. "Ubuntu: WeeChat packages". packages.ubuntu.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
11. "Mandriva: WeeChat packages". mandriva.com. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
12. "Fedora: WeeChat packages". fedoraproject.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
13. "Gentoo: WeeChat packages". gentoo.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
14. "Arch Linux: WeeChat packages". archlinux.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
15. "FreeBSD Ports: WeeChat". freebsd.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
16. Brown, Martin (2005-09-07). "Free IRC clients : Choosing the best IRC client for your needs". Free Software Magazine (7). Retrieved 2014-01-28.

External links

• Official website