Subject: Re: Matrix chat room about NNCP

From: Sergey Matveev <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2022 19:56:43 +0300

*** John Goerzen [2022-01-23 21:36]:
>I just bridged it with irc.oftc.net #nncp also.  So you can definitely
>use it via IRC as well.

Cool! I added references to it and Matrix channel to
http://www.nncpgo.org/Contacts.html

>The reference server, Synapse, is indeed Python-based and
>resource-hungry.  I deploy it with
>https://github.com/spantaleev/matrix-docker-ansible-deploy but I think
>most people just pick an existing server.

I tried to run Matrix today again. I do not look at anything written on
Python: its current packaging ecosystems (PyPI) is just broken. Moreover
huge quantity of packages have some kind of broken requirements.txt, for
example mentioning "cryptography" package, that requires now Rust for
its building. It is TOO burdensome to install anything Pythonic now,
because of broken ecosystem

I tried https://matrix.org/docs/projects/server/dendrite server. Build
it, created configuration files, no issues. Then I tried:
https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/gomuks/
https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/circle/
https://matrix.org/docs/projects/client/mm
as a Matrix client. After half an hour of dependencies building,
"circle" failed compiling -- I did not bother finding what was the
problem. gomuks lacks documentation in its repository. Its README point
to some JavaScript-required website. Ok, anyway I build it, run it. It
failed running some ncurses-related utility. Installed it. Run it again,
point to my Matrix server instance. It prints that it is in sync with...
something. After a while that message disappears, I see two windows,
fact of connection to the Matrix server, but nothing happens anymore. I
can not type any commands or even quit. So I killed it. I build mm, run
it with filled up configuration file, added some debug messages printing
to the console, saw that it successfully logged in on my server. But
according to documentation, it is not capable of joining any rooms by
itself, that is why I did not see any FIFO files created on filesystem.
I tried https://github.com/42wim/matterbridge with my own IRC server. It
successfully logs to Matrix and IRC server, but I get response from
matrix.org that I am not authorized joining #nncp channel. I suppose
that I have to join it through some "ordinary" Matrix client, but
Matterbridge only bridges channels together.

So... I still did not run any of the clients capable joining rooms.
Python -- no way nowadays, its completely broken. I saw that on
GNU/Linux systems with binary wheels allowed -- it will succeed in more
cases than on FreeBSD. Web-based clients of course is not an option.
Probably I will try that after a few years... again :-)

I was told that WeeChat plugin definitely works. But... again, it is
written on Python and I just do not want to learn another IRC client (I
use irssi).

Possibly Matrix solves many issues with XMPP, but I have never ever
succeeded and seen any of its channels in my terminal at all. More than
a half of solutions suggest using some web-pages with JavaScript
required -- no deal. At least I succeeded in server setup (probably).
But XMPP just have dozens of clients and servers easy to setup and run.
Actually I am confused with that, because JSON and HTTP seems so easy to
be used by modern ecosystems, but seems that majority of people are not
interested in desktop and terminals anymore.

>Feel free to drop by, on Matrix or IRC, if you like.

I have joined #nncp channel on irc.oftc.net, just for the interest.

-- 
Sergey Matveev (http://www.stargrave.org/)
OpenPGP: CF60 E89A 5923 1E76 E263  6422 AE1A 8109 E498 57EF