IRCv3

by xvilka • 5 years ago

130 90 5 years ago

sneak7• 5 years ago

I really want the IRC protocol to decouple its sessions from the TCP connection and move to using HTTP as a transport, even if the only api verb is "send" and the only response is "receive output buffer".

I used to really love IRC, and think it could undergo a resurgence given the right upgrades.

tastyfreeze• 5 years ago

What upgrades do you think should be added? I miss the environment of IRC 25 years ago. Its something that no messenging application has really been able to replicate for me.

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

At a bare minimum it needs to be redesigned for modern computers. We have left the days where user all use desktops which sit online always and hold an open connection. IRC needs to support something HTTP like with history.

pantalaimon• 5 years ago

What's the advantage of using HTTP?

sneak7• 5 years ago

I can reverse proxy it, I can dockerize it, I don't have to modify my firewall, I can TLS-SNI vhost it, I can decouple the TLS keys from the daemon process by terminating TLS on a different container, I can connect to it from weird LANs that filter non-HTTP, I can drop the TCP connections from my mobile device without dropping my whole login session, et c.

threeseed4• 5 years ago

Whether you are in an enterprise, university, airport, internet cafe, restrictive country etc. HTTP traffic just works.

No one is going to open up non-standard ports especially not for IRC which most people aren't familiar with.

metroholografix4• 5 years ago

Not everything has to run on top of HTTP or use json.

IRCv3 gets a lot more right than wrong.

threeseed4• 5 years ago

If you want adoption within the enterprise then you really need to use HTTP.

And these days even most SMBs are taking network security seriously and blocking non HTTP ports.

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

Using HTTP would be an absolutely massive improvement for IRC. IRC is essentially useless on mobile without having some man in the middle server to convert IRC to http.

It's even pretty useless on laptops or desktops that aren't always running.

otherflavors• 5 years ago

Many modern IRCDs expose a websocket connection, if that's HTTP enough

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

Does the web socket let you see the history while your device was sleeping?

secure• 5 years ago

RobustIRC does this: https://robustirc.net/docs/robustsession.html

(Disclaimer: I’m a developer of RobustIRC)

sneak7• 5 years ago

This is super cool! Where do you irc?

danieloaks• 5 years ago

For what it's worth, we've been throwing around a websocket standard that should be supported across a range of servers. On the decoupling sessions from the TCP connection side, the server that I work on (Oragono https://oragono.io ) does this by default, and I've heard that InspIRCd has plans to do work on this issue as well. Definitely a lotta fun stuff in this area.

sneak7• 5 years ago

Websockets over http over sockets is silly. There's no point in moving a socket based protocol to a websocket; if you're going to change it, make it just use HTTP and skip the terrible hack that is websockets in the first place.

I like oragono and also wrote an ircd in go, and was inspired a bit by some of the project's code.

dang• 5 years ago

A couple of past threads:

IRC v3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12671063 - Oct 2016 (217 comments)

IRCv3 - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11005999 - Jan 2016 (77 comments)

disposekinetics2• 5 years ago

One of the things I really appreciate about IRC is the raw simplicity of the protocol. I hope that does not get lost in an effort to modernize.

Karrot_Kream5• 5 years ago

I don't really care much about the protocol myself. I'm never going to be speaking "raw IRC" at any point, so why does it matter? I understand that you want to keep protocol simplicity high to make it easier on implementers, but other than just enough to encourage implementation, I don't see the need. We're talking about human chat applications here. Machine chat can use simpler protocols of course, like a light layer atop MQTT, or the existing base XMPP spec.

t-writescode• 5 years ago

Writing bots from scratch in a new language is more fun when parsing is easy.

VectorLock2• 5 years ago

I've interacted with IRC servers via telnet a ton of times. But overall I think that era of protocol design is unfortunately long passed (looking at you SMTP)

badsectoracula3• 5 years ago

Back when i was in highschool i wrote a few IRC clients just to learn socket programming in Delphi and later C and Java. I always appreciated how easy it is to get a simple client running.

hultner• 5 years ago

Actually, I have in fact been speaking "raw IRC" quite a few times. Not much anymore but back in the days when working on a new servers it was quite convenient to just telnet irc.x.yz 6667, NICK Hultner, USER Hultner * * * * (don't care for quick sess), JOIN #xyz-help, PRIVMSG #xyz-help Hello, anyone familiar with error Z1 on XYZ?, pong.

That's basically everything you need to know for some basic chat.

mjevans• 5 years ago

The last time I looked at IRCv3 I was disappointed by how much was an optional extension.

My opinion is that a strong 'minimum' protocol is critical to interoperability and opportunities for federated protocols to function well across providers. I recall that was the main, non XML, reason that XMPP failed. Of course I also dislike XML as a data storage / transmission format.

badsectoracula3• 5 years ago

IRCv3 is written to be backwards compatible so it makes sense to have a ton of optional stuff - considering it is backwards compatible, everything is optional :-P.

And it makes sense, IRC is already out there and has a ton of servers and clients working, you can't split that community based on the client they're using otherwise you're just creating yet another isolated chat protocol like a ton others before it.

Yoric• 5 years ago

Given that Matrix seems to be quite successful these days, and afaict is basically a next-gen IRC, is there any compelling reason to push IRC?

floren• 5 years ago

Because Matrix basically has one decent server implementation and one decent client, both provided by the same company, and even that client is some godawful Element thing. I run a Matrix homeserver and use it daily but frankly, I prefer IRC.

Kudos• 5 years ago

I use Fluffychat on mobile and Fractal on Gnome. Fluffychat is excellent, but Fractal is still lacking e2ee support (there's a rewrite on the way with support already in place).

gpanders• 5 years ago

Because Matrix basically has one decent server implementation and one decent client, both provided by the same company, and even that client is some godawful Element thing

This is a fair criticism, but IRC is decades old while Matrix is what, 3-5 years old? Give it time and choice of clients and servers will only improve.

jszymborski• 5 years ago

Have you tried the CLI clients like gomuks[0]? They give a very IRC feel to Matrix imo.

[0] https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/gomuks

diragon• 5 years ago

gomuks is pretty good these days.

alekratz• 5 years ago

It helps that IRC is extremely simple. Most servers you can connect to and chat using telnet if you're so inclined.

Arathorn3• 5 years ago

Matrix is pretty simple too; one HTTP hit to send a message; one HTTP hit to receive a message. c.f. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20949477

As others have pointed out, there's also a pretty decent range of very usable "daily driver" clients these days (Element, weechat, FluffyChat, nheko, Quaternion, NeoChat all spring to mind). 2nd generation servers are also progressing well (Dendrite in Go & Conduit in Rust).

SilverRed6• 5 years ago

Why should I care? I will never be inclined to connect to IMs via telnet. I just want something that works on mobile without holding a connection open and that supports media uploads.

ygra• 5 years ago

I've done that, but good luck joining a channel and writing a message before you have to answer your first PING and get disconnected again because you didn't respond in time.

_abox• 5 years ago

Matrix seems to lack a good high density client. The only one that's really full featured is Element but it's very consumerish and uses lots of screen space. As soon as you bridge multiple IRC networks and have lots of other chats open, the chat list becomes really messy imo.

Arathorn3• 5 years ago

Element Web has various high density modes including a dedicated IRC style mode which looks and behaves like xchat?

Nasreddin_Hodja2• 5 years ago

The only one that's really full featured is Element but it's very consumerish

I heard that server is very consumerish too.

IRCv3

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