Net::IRC 0.61 README Dennis Taylor Thu Aug 26 22:29:39 EDT 1999 ============================================================================== Table of Contents ------------------------ 1. Introduction 2. Availability 3. Prerequisites 4. Installation 5. Demonstration Script 6. Bugs 7. Disclaimer 8. Copyright 9. 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. This is the first version of Net::IRC to come with documentation... albeit incomplete and not terribly useful documentation, but we'll get it fleshed out soon enough, so bear with us. PLEASE send the authors feedback and advice. Contact information can be found at the end of this file. Writing really annoying bots with this module is punishable by having merlyn sing "The Rainbow Connection" to you... watch your step. 2. Availability ------------------------ Source code and information about the Net::IRC project can be found here: http://netirc.betterbox.net/ (Don't even ask how that hostname came about.) 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/ And, of course, there's CPAN for the (mostly) latest released source: http://www.perl.com/CPAN/modules/by-module/Net/ 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 We don't have any automated tests yet, but they might be in the not-too- distant future. You may instead 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... Oh, and by the way... if you say "Send me " to an irctest bot, it will send the specified file (if it can) as a demonstration of Net::IRC's DCC and scheduler interface. This is a potential security hole, so be careful. 6. Bugs ------------------------ None. OK, so I'm full of it. Probably tons. In particular, the format system doesnt even pretend to work, DCC still doesn't fail very gracefully, and it may not be 100% compatible with Undernet and other non-EFnet servers. 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. Disclaimer ------------------------ Remember: The Net::IRC team is not responsible for HD crashes, power supply meltdown, processor burnout, spontaneous silicon combustion, or nuclear fallout resulting from the use of this product. Use at your own risk. It's pretty stable, but weird stuff tends to happen anywhere computers are involved... 8. 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. :-) 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. 9. 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://netirc.betterbox.net/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 EFNet #perl or the comp.lang.perl.misc newsgroup. Thanks!