Daniel P. Barron

Suppose you’ve got a Pizarro shared host, and you want to run irssi. The company policy is such that anything you can install locally, must be installed locally. Luckily screen is already on there, so all you need to do is compile the irc client.

First, get irssi-1.1.1.tar.gz ⁱ or whatever version.

~ $ mkdir src
~ $ cd src
~/src $ curl http://danielpbarron.com/images/irssi-1.1.1.tar.gz > irssi-1.1.1.tar.gz

Next, untar it and do the whole configure make make install thing. The only difference is you need two flags on the configure; these tell it where to install rather than the usual global spot.

~/src $ tar -xzf irssi-1.1.1.tar.gz
~/src $ cd irssi-1.1.1
~/src/irssi-1.1.1 $ ./configure --prefix=~/ --with-perl-lib=~/lib/perl5/x86_64-linux
~/src/irssi-1.1.1 $ make
~/src/irssi-1.1.1 $ make install

The binary will end up as ~/bin/irssi which is what you type to run the program.

This recipe allows you to use those very handy perl scripts for which irssi is known. My favorites are as follows:

• go.pl ⁱⁱ
• nickcolor.pl ⁱⁱⁱ
• screen_away.pl ^iv
• trackbar.pl ^v

You can put these in ~/.irssi/scripts/ and ln -s them in ~/.irssi/scripts/autorun/ to have them loaded at startup.

1. a8322872881e9cf372faf73326943750804efbf02ca24c0db05f8996a07801d7ac1bae127637fa67a0a923f31de26ccee817bc36b30ee1dafa816d19862e4925  irssi-1.1.1.tar.gz

    ^

2. b001b79d09b28c6625bb52b62956e1b372cf7e04721d499bacc598bac538a9c05e9f0dbdfa089cc7aa30831276a2ba5457b8595495d5ffc5f8ee83fd394b72bc  go.pl

   ---

   Lets you type /go channelname to jump to that channel. ^

3. 3abbb700d6d80e0fc98b8182bfa9297b3a2e5a1c6d0e04757f4020fb9772041765f01a4e250aef83d40773e7770a5ae38432db1d7eb0e565a892c319179ddeba  nickcolor.pl

   ---

   Lets you set colors to nicknames with /color set nick [2-14] and /color save — I like to color based on my WoT ratings.

   ---

   This file has been modified to set all new nicknames to the color number 14 which is grey. The default behavior was to assign random colors to new nicknames.

   ---

   Old line:

       $color = simple_hash $nick;

   ---

   New line:

       $color = 14;

    ^

4. 6169b31a53493ea35c0825bdd1ca139d09ca58f71cb71b80df1e08d4f6fa54c8766de5f1bfc178e6ca9f7b9f2c8257900fb45b82ab15156e614a69d517c88397  screen_away.pl

   ---

   This script will automatically set you as /away when you detach the screen in which irssi is running.

   ---

   You’ll want to change the settings to customize your away message by typing /set screen which will list a few other options as well.

   ---

   This is a modified version. I had to change the line starting with $socket_path — the \n.+ needed to be replaced with .* due to some difference in screen versions.

   ---

   Old line:

   $socket_path =~ s/^.+\d+ Sockets? in ([^\n]+)\.\n.+$/$1/s;

   ---

   New line:

   $socket_path =~ s/^.+\d+ Sockets? in ([^\n]+)\..*$/$1/s;

    ^

5. 1483f96829333c8425a552d9a7458c75e8d494ff30edff94ee5e020d6e2975c4f874ff69fb55880a93aa19ff45d4e76325243117cd1fe25883cf5ab4a72e6ca9  trackbar.pl

   ---

   This script will insert a marker line separating chat lines you have already read from new lines. You’ll want to do /set trackbar — I recommend the following:

    trackbar_string = _
    trackbar_style = %B

    ^