OpenSourcery

Recently I started work on a new chat/im application in my spare time. I recently decided to work on it as my bench project here at OpenSourcery. I know there are a lot of IM and IRC clients out there, and many are quite good. However, I find that none meet my needs exactly.

Desired features of my ideal chat/im application

• Ability to leave it logged in 24/7 on one system and access it remotely form any computer, even multiple computers at once - No client I could find does this.
• Ability to connect to AIM, Yahoo, Google talk, ICQ, Jabber, and IRC all in one client - Pidgin does this.
• Usable without X - IRSSI and a few other IRC only clients do this.
• Easily hackable in perl
• Ability to connect to multiple IRC networks/channels

I decided that to have all these features I would need to write my own. At first I did not expect I would get very far. Obviously this program is not a small undertaking. However, I knew at the very least it would be a good learning experience. If nothing else I figured it would help me feel content with my other IM/Chat clients.

I decided if I was going to do something big I might as well go all out. As such I am taking this as an opportunity to learn several new technologies: Moose, POE, Fey::ORM, and possibly Catalyst if I make a web front-end. These are relatively new and amazing perl packages.

As of today I completed stage 1, which is a working IRC bot that can connect to multiple networks and channels, and logs several key events to a database. This was accomplished using Fey::ORM, which builds most of the object code I need at run-time using the database schema. And also using POE::Component::IRC, which is the best IRC client module currently available for perl.

Next week I intend to work on stage 2, which will bring in basic client-server connectivity so that a client app on any machine can connect to the IRC lurker I have now.