[gentoo-dev] Re: net-irc/xchat

[Denis M. (Phr33d0m)]

On 11/25/2012 09:27 PM, Lars Wendler wrote:
> Hey list,
>
> I'm planning to lastrite net-irc/xchat in the next couple of weeks.
> Unfortunately my hope that upstream development would be resumed
> didn't come true. As the code becomes more and more outdated, open
> unfixed security bugs are present[1][2] and at some point in the
> future =x11-libs/gtk+-2* will vanish from the tree I don't see any
> other option than removing xchat from the tree. I don't see this as
> a big drama as we already have a drop-in replacement in form of the
> net-irc/hexchat fork.
Hello, I'd have to mention, as HexChat is a fork from XChat it strictly
depends on gtk+-2 as well. So removing gtk+-2* will make HexChat
unusuable (at least the GUI). Also there are no plans on porting it to
anything like gtk+-3 (or Qt (I have to say I'd love that)).
> I checked this today and all people have to do is emerge hexchat
> and then copy over the xchat config: mkdir ${HOME}/.config ; cp -a
> ${HOME}/.xchat2 ${HOME}/.config/hexchat
Since hexchat-2.9.4 they also have to move their xchat.conf file to
hexchat.conf (this reminder message displays after emerge).
>
> I'd like to see your opinion on this matter as long as you have
> one you'd like to share with me ;) Furthermore I would shift my
> attention from the xchat package to hexchat seeing that it
> currently gets proxy maintained. If there's no objection I'd like
> to become the new contact of the person currently maintaining the
> package in portage.
Unfortunately I have some bad news here. The same way XChat's
development died some time ago (with the exception of some critical
patches here and there), HexChat's development has met a wall. The only
active developer has quit the project. I hope this does not mean the end
of the project as there are a couple of contributors who seem interested
in further developing HexChat (they have write access to hexchat's
github repo so further versions will depend on them).

Answering some questions already on this topic, hexchat has it's own
system info script, so xchat-sys is pointless for hexchat (although it
might work - yes, or what hasufell saw was the built-in working and
not the xchat-xsys plugin).

Also, since hexchat-2.9.4 there is no more tcl/lua support. All other
plugins are supported without issues.
There's only one thing to be noted here, there are some perl/python
plugins which make use of "xchat packages". Which means that, if you
see something like this: "package Xchat::" inside your plugin you have
to remove that line, otherwise hexchat won't be able to load the script.



Regards,
Denis M.