WeeChat

Not to be confused with WeChat.

WeeChat (Wee Enhanced Environment for Chat) is a free and open-source Internet Relay Chat client that is designed to be light and fast. It is released under the terms of the GNU GPL-3.0-or-later and has been developed since 2003.

WeeChat

WeeChat 3.4 with the default configuration
Developer(s)	Sébastien Helleu
Initial release	June 26, 2003; 20 years ago (2003-06-26)
Stable release	4.2.2^[1]  / 7 April 2024
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	14 languages^[2]
Type	IRC client
License	GPL-3.0-or-later
Website	weechat.org

WeeChat comes with a default ncurses interface, and it is possible to use other interfaces (e.g. Glowing Bear,^[3] a web frontend) through the use of the relay plugin.^[4]

Features

WeeChat's features include:^[5]

• 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).^[6]

Binary packages and builds of WeeChat are available for installation as well as the source code for self compilation.^[7] This includes most Linux distributions and BSD package management systems, such as Debian,^[8] Ubuntu,^[9] Mandriva Linux,^[10] Fedora,^[11] Gentoo Linux,^[12] Arch Linux,^[13] FreeBSD via the FreeBSD Ports system, OpenBSD via the Ports collection, as well on NetBSD via Pkgsrc.^[14]

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.^[15]

See also

•  Free and open-source software portal

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

References

1. Error: Unable to display the reference properly. See the documentation for details.
2. "WeeChat translations". WeeChat. Retrieved 2021-09-04.
3. "Glowing Bear - A web client for WeeChat". github.com. glowing-bear.org. Retrieved 16 December 2015.
4. Helleu, Sébastien. "WeeChat user's guide". weechat.org. Retrieved 2017-09-27.
5. "WeeChat :: about :: Features". weechat.org. Retrieved 2014-01-28.
6. "WeeChat in Cygwin". weechat.org. 2013-10-19. Retrieved 2014-08-06.
7. "WeeChat: Downloads". weechat.org. 2009-03-04. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
8. "Debian: WeeChat packages". packages.debian.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
9. "Ubuntu: WeeChat packages". packages.ubuntu.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
10. "Mandriva: WeeChat packages". mandriva.com. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
11. "Fedora: WeeChat packages". fedoraproject.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.^{[permanent dead link]}
12. "Gentoo: WeeChat packages". gentoo.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
13. "Arch Linux: WeeChat packages". archlinux.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
14. "FreeBSD Ports: WeeChat". freebsd.org. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
15. 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

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to WeeChat.

• Official website