From irssi to weechat

May 11, 2023

I started using IRC in 2003, around the same time I started using linux. My IRC client of choice was xchat. I had a lot of fun adapting an xmms plug-in for xchat that pastes currently playing song to the current chatroom.

Then I switched to irssi. Oldest irssi logs I could find is from 2007. Around the time I was switching to Gentoo as my main desktop system. I used irssi ever since. I had a few trivial plugins installed: nickcolor.pl and a few one-liners around ChanServ and NickServ integration.

A few weeks ago I noticed that nickcolor.pl plug-in does not quite work for some channels. When I open a chat tab for the first time (since irssi startup) where the discussion is already ongoing all the nicks get the same color. I spent some time debugging nickcolor.pl and I did not manage to get it fixed. I rely on the colors a lot: I frequently mix nicks together if they don’t look distinct enough and answer wrong people or misinterpret conversations.

Instead of spending more time with irssi I decided to look at the console alternatives that implement nick coloring by default and are more actively maintained. tiny and weechat looked most promising.

tiny is written in rust, has a nice UI and has a bit too simplistic yaml configuration for my needs. I also had an impression that CertFP support was added in master branch only and did not see a proper release yet.

weechat is written in C, has UI very close to irssi and (to my surprise) has even smaller amount of required dependencies than irssi. It’s configs are ini files with many-many options. weechat provides excellent built-in support for searching through config options. weechat also has a spell checking capability via aspell!

I was a bit worried about vulnerability count on weechats side, but apparently irssi has very similar profile if we look at the types of encountered bugs:

I settled on weechat.

weechat config

Here is my full configuration so far:

/server add libera irc.libera.chat/6697 -ssl -autoconnect
  /set irc.server.libera.ssl on
  /set irc.server.libera.ssl_verify on
  /set irc.server.libera.ssl_cert %h/certs/libera.pem
  /set irc.server.libera.sasl_mechanism external

  /set irc.server.libera.nicks ...
  /set irc.server.libera.username ...
  /set irc.server.libera.realname ...
  /set irc.server.libera.autojoin ...

/server add oftc irc.oftc.net/6697 -ssl -autoconnect

  /set irc.server.oftc.ssl on
  /set irc.server.oftc.ssl_verify on
  /set irc.server.oftc.ssl_cert %h/certs/oftc.pem

  /set irc.server.oftc.nicks ...
  /set irc.server.oftc.username ...
  /set irc.server.oftc.realname ...
  /set irc.server.oftc.autojoin ...

# don't notify on joins/leaves
/set weechat.look.buffer_notify_default message

# spell checking
/set spell.check.enabled on
/set spell.check.real_time on
/set spell.check.default_dict "en,ru"

# don't merge server messages from different servers
/set irc.look.server_buffer independent

# don't trigger upgency properties on terminal to avoid focus change
/set trigger.trigger.beep.enabled off

# avoid "blue", too dark on my colorscheme
/set weechat.color.chat_nick_colors "cyan,magenta,green,brown,lightblue,default,lightcyan,lightmagenta,lightgreen"

# Filter most joins/quits/parts:
#   https://blog.weechat.org/post/2008/10/25/Smart-IRC-join-part-quit-message-filter
/set irc.look.smart_filter on
/filter add irc_smart * irc_smart_filter *

/save

One special thing to note here is absence of /set irc.server.oftc.sasl_mechanism external line if we compare OFTC and Libera setups. Presence of external on OFTC causes connection drops with message irc: client capability: SASL not supported; irc: disconnected from server.

Parting words

After 16 years of irssi usage I don’t feel much discomfort switching to weechat. Most of the key bindings are the same. The UI has slightly more details that irssi. It felt overwhelming at first. But once I read the quickstart guide and user guide it became natural.

I have not yet ported any of my trivial plugins but it does not look complicated at a first glance.

Have fun!