loperIRCLogBot/libircclient-1.9/doc/sources/Introduction.rst

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=====================
Introduction
=====================
Overview
~~~~~~~~
Libircclient is a small but extremely powerful library which implements the client IRC protocol. It is designed to be small, fast, portable and compatible
with the RFC standards as well as non-standard but popular features. It is perfect for building the IRC clients and bots.
Features
~~~~~~~~
- Comprehensive C API;
- Full coverage of the IRC protocol using providing functions;
- Supports multiple simultaneous connection to different IRC servers or even to the same server;
- Supports both plain and SSL connections to the IRC servers with the optional certificate check;
- Full multi-threading support, the library is thread-safe;
- All the processing could be handled by a single thread even if multiple connections are used;
- Non-blocking, asynchronous event-based interface implemented with callbacks;
- Extra support for the socket-based applications, which use select();
- CTCP support with optional build-in reply code;
- Supports CTCP PING necessary to pass the “spoof check” implemented by most IRC servers;
- Flexible DCC support, including both DCC chat, and DCC file transfer;
- Can both initiate and react to initiated DCC;
- Can accept or decline DCC sessions asynchronously;
- Written in plain C, very small binary size (around 30K depending on platform);
- Compatible all tested IRC clients;
- Free software licensed under the LGPLv3 license;
- Supports Linux as well as any POSIX-compliant Unix, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows;
- Supports 32/64bit architectures as well as non-x86 architectures;
- IPv6 support (optional, must be compiled in);
- OpenSSL support (optional, must be compiled in);
- Cocoa interface by Nathan Ollerenshaw;
- Comprehensive documentation, examples and the FAQ;
Known issues
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Even though possible by using multiple sessions, the library is not suitable to connect to a large number of IRC servers simultaneously. If you still want to use it, you'd have to overcome the following:
- You cannot use the main loop in :c:func:`irc_run` because it only supports one session. You would have to use :c:func:`irc_add_select_descriptors`
- You'd have to handle reconnections separately by processing the relevant :c:func:`irc_process_select_descriptors` return values
- If you wish to use poll/epoll() instead of select() you'd have to write more logic as it is not directly supported. See the :ref:`FAQ <faq_epoll>`.
- The library is not optimized to have a low per-connection memory footprint, each non-SSL connection uses at least 4K, with around 32K per connection for SSL.
Author
~~~~~~
This library is created by George Yunaev, copyright 2004-2016. Please see http://www.ulduzsoft.com/linux/libircclient
License
~~~~~~~
Libircclient is licensed under Lesser General Public License version 3 or higher. The complete license text is provided in the Appendix.