uIRC/README.md

# MicroIRC, a simple, lightweight IRC protocol helper

## Requirements

- CMake (tested on 3.17)
- C99 compiler (ideally clang or gcc, should work with anything that supports these though)
- corelibs libraries (https://git.redxen.eu/caskd/corelibs)
  + llist (linked list library)
  + stringext (string.h extensions/wrappers)

## Building

First, create the required build files (usually the Makefile)
```sh
cmake -B build/ -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release .
```
|       Option       |                              Description                               |   Type   |  Status  | Default |
|:------------------:|:----------------------------------------------------------------------:|:--------:|:--------:|:--------:
|  BUILD_IRCV3       |                          Build IRCv3 support                           | boolean  | WIP ~20% |  false  |
|  BUILD_VALIDATORS  |    Build validators that check if the messages follow the standards    | boolean  | WIP   0% |  false  |
|  BUILD_DOCS        |                   Build documentation using doxygen                    | boolean  | WIP ~35% |  false  |
|  BUILD_TESTS       |   Build tests that check if the build results behave as they should    | boolean  | WIP ~60% |  false  |
|  CODE_ANALYZER     |                       Use static analysis tools                        | boolean  | WIP   TK |  false  |
|  CODE_COVERAGE     |                     Generate code coverage output                      | boolean  | WIP   CI |  false  |

Following that, just use your build system and compile it

Example for **make**:
```sh
make -C build
```

You now should have the library built at `build/libuirc.a` or `build/libuirc.so.VERSION`

## Features

### Finished
- IRC message parsing and assembly that doesn't lose details
- Simple message allocation and translation between string format and in-memory structure

### Planned / Not finished
- RFC2812 compliant parser (still need to verify a few things)
- Variable-size lists wrappers (capabilities, tags, messages in a buffer etc.)
- Message validators (checks messages for formatting problems)
- CTCP -> ANSI formatting translation
- Mode masks

## Motivation

I have started this project initally to learn more about the protocol and learn C.
This project has taught me on how to organize code, what tasks are required to maintain a codebase clean and other smaller things.
Over the time this learning process has resulted into multiple rewrites or/and redesigns. These include:

  - Splitting the daemon from the core (library)
  - Parsing tags into structs
  - Storing structs in memory instead of pointers to buffers
  - Separating structs
  - Parsing read-only by copying buffers

Each of these required redesigning some/all of the code and some also have their downsides.

Over the time it has turned into a more generalized library that is supposed to not be tied to a specific codebase.
I am motivated to write this as i've seen that many codebases have turned into overly-fragmented code or monolithic code.
This library isn't supposed to replace any other libraries but instead it should fill this small space that i've noticed was missing.

## License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.