Net::IRC 0.41 README Dennis Taylor Wed Dec 10 16:08:21 CST 1997 ============================================================================== Table of Contents ------------------------ 1. Introduction 2. Availability 3. Prerequisites 4. Installation 5. Demonstration Script 6. Bugs 7. Copyright 8. Developer Information 1. Introduction ------------------------ Welcome to Net::IRC, a work in progress. First intended to be a quick tool for writing an IRC script in Perl, Net::IRC has grown into a comprehensive Perl implementation of the IRC protocol (RFC 1459), supported and developed by several members of the EFnet IRC channel #perl. Please read the Changes file for details about recent updates, and the Bugs section of this document for notes about future improvements. There is as of yet no formal documentation, but the sample script included with the package should give the clueful reader an idea of how it works. Someday, we'll actually get around to writing PODs for it... once it's reasonably stable. PLEASE send the authors feedback and advice. Contact information can be found at the end of this file. 2. Availability ------------------------ The following two identical sites provide source code and information about the Net::IRC project: http://www.execpc.com/~corbeau/irc/ http://betterbox.net/fimmtiu/irc/ The working directory for the next release, which is probably of little interest to any non-abnormally-curious person reading this, can be found at: http://www.execpc.com/~corbeau/irc/dev/ 3. Prerequisites ------------------------ Net::IRC requires Perl version 5.004 or higher to install and run. Hypothetically, it could run on 5.003_9something with IO::* installed, but you may as well upgrade anyhow. The latest version of Perl can be found at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/src/latest.tar.gz (for UNIX), or at http://www.perl.com/CPAN/ports/ for various non-Unix machines. 4. Installation ------------------------ Same old, same old. If you get through all these steps without anything emitting horrible dire warning messages, you're all set. In particular, the "perl Makefile.PL" will barf if run with older versions of Perl, but if you read the Prerequisites section of this README, you already know that, right? Do this, in the following order: perl Makefile.PL make make install You may now wish to play around with the... 5. Demonstration Script ------------------------ A sample Net::IRC script is included with the distribution, under the creative name "irctest". It doesn't do much more than connect to a server and print annoying messages to anyone who talks to it, but that should be enough to give you an idea of how the whole enchilada fits together until we actually get some real documentation written. Just don't be surprised if IRC admins get a clue about it and start killing it as soon as they see one log on. :-) 6. Bugs ------------------------ None. OK, so I'm full of it. Probably tons. In particular, the format system doesnt even pretend to work yet, and user-initiated DCCs block indefinitely. Also, there's no way to schedule asynchronous events like "run this handler every 5 minutes", and the "connection closed" messages for non-Connection objects don't tell you which connection closed down. (Doh.) Expect fixes for these soon. Then expect us to find a whole new crop to write about in this space. Sigh. Should you find one that we may have overlooked, PLEASE get in touch with one of the developers (see section 8, below). 7. Copyright ------------------------ This is standard legal boilerplate stuff, I suppose. The names on the copyright notice do NOT reflect in any way the time and effort put into this project by lots of studly people, but if we did that, we'd have to start a small corporation to handle them all in case of legal problems. :-) All I'm saying is, this doesn't mean much, so don't take it personally. Without further ado... *ahem* : This module copyright (c) 1997 Greg Bacon & Dennis Taylor. All rights reserved. This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Perl Artistic License, distributed with this module. 8. Developer Information ------------------------ The arduous and dreary task of maintaining and doing various stuff with Net::IRC is taken care of by a bunch of people on the EFnet IRC channel #perl who have way too much time on their hands. If you're interested in helping out, there's a mailing list for Net::IRC development; details can be found at http://www.execpc.com/~corbeau/irc/list.html . Submit bug reports and problems to Dennis Taylor . If you're looking for technical support for a Net::IRC script, your best bet is to ask on #perl or the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup. Thanks!