mcabber mit Homebrew, apk, apt, dnf, MacPorts, Nix, pacman, zypper installieren

Projektlinks

• Homepage
• Repository
• Upstream-Dokumentation
• Paketmanager-Seite

Befehle und Aliase

• mcabber

Projektgeschichte

The official homepage records the first public mcabber release on 2005-06-08 and describes the program as a small XMPP console client tested on GNU/Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, and Cygwin. It grew during the classic Jabber era, when terminal users wanted a persistent chat client that behaved more like Mutt, Irssi, or centericq than a desktop messenger.

MCabber's 0.10.0 release in 2010 switched the client to the Loudmouth XMPP library and added dynamic modules. The 1.0.0 release in 2015 arrived on the project's tenth anniversary with Message Carbons, multi-language spellchecking, completion and scroll-lock improvements, and new SSL options when used with a recent Loudmouth.

Maintenance after 1.0 focused on protocol and security details important to XMPP users: Message Carbons, PGP, OTR, SSL/TLS handling, XDG configuration support, and fixes for roster-push and CVE-related issues. In 2018 the maintainer added an official GitHub mirror while keeping the Mercurial repository as the project repository.

Adoptionsgeschichte

MCabber is available across many package managers listed in the input metadata, including Alpine, Homebrew, Debian/Ubuntu, Fedora, MacPorts, Nix, Arch, and openSUSE. That breadth is notable for a terminal chat client: it survived because it served a durable niche of shell-first XMPP users.

The upstream homepage also points users to known operating-system packages, reinforcing that distribution packaging has been part of the project's normal installation path rather than an afterthought.

Wie es verwendet wird

A typical MCabber setup stores connection and behavior settings in ~/.mcabber/mcabberrc. The official sample configuration shows JID, optional password or password_eval, server, TLS, certificate, fingerprint, and PGP options, which is why the config file can also be a credentials-bearing file.

Users run mcabber as a long-lived terminal client for one-to-one XMPP chats, group chats, history logging, command-driven roster navigation, and integrations through external action triggers or modules.

Warum Paket-Nerds sich dafür interessieren

MCabber matters to package nerds because it is a surviving example of the console-chat-client lineage in Unix packaging. It sits beside tools such as Irssi, WeeChat, Mutt, and Finch in the category of network clients whose user interface is primarily a terminal command language.

Its packaging history also captures the old Jabber-to-XMPP ecosystem: Loudmouth as a client library, OTR and PGP integrations, XDG migration, and signed tarball releases from a long-running personal project site.

Zeitleiste

• 2005: First public mcabber release.
• 2010: mcabber 0.10.0 switched to Loudmouth and added dynamic modules.
• 2015: mcabber 1.0.0 was released on the project's tenth anniversary.
• 2016: mcabber 1.0.1 added Message Carbons, PGP, OTR, SSL, and XDG improvements.
• 2017: mcabber 1.0.5 fixed CVE-2017-5589 and improved large-roster performance.
• 2018: An official GitHub mirror was created.
• 2020: mcabber 1.1.2 was released as a maintenance release.

Related projects

• Related projects include Loudmouth, Gajim, Profanity, Poezio, Finch, Pidgin, Irssi, WeeChat, and the broader XMPP/Jabber client ecosystem.

Quellen

• https://hg.lilotux.net/mcabber
• https://mcabber.com/
• https://mcabber.com/files/mcabber.1.html
• https://mcabber.com/files/mcabberrc.example
• https://wiki.mcabber.com/
• source_facts.package-manager