Add post on new IRC::Client

1 files changed, 86 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/_posts/2021-05-13-a-new-irc-client.md b/src/_posts/2021-05-13-a-new-irc-client.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..e52cc37
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/_posts/2021-05-13-a-new-irc-client.md
@@ -0,0 +1,86 @@
+---
+layout: post
+tags: Raku IRC Programming
+title: A New IRC::Client
+social:
+  email: mailto:~tyil/public-inbox@lists.sr.ht&subject=A New IRC::Client
+description: >
+  Due to the current iteration of IRC::Client in the Raku programming
+  language's ecosystem being unmaintained, I've decided to make my own
+  implementation with the intent of replacing it.
+---
+
+The Raku programming language has a popular module for creating IRC bots,
+[`IRC::Client`](https://github.com/raku-community-modules/IRC-Client). However,
+it's been stale for quite a while, and one of the bots I host,
+[Geth](https://github.com/Raku/geth), is having troubles on a regular basis.
+
+I've looked at the source code, and found a lot of neat tricks, but when
+maintaining a library, I generally want clean and straightforward code instead.
+To that end, I decided to just write my own from scratch. Given that [the IRC
+protocol is rather simple](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2812), this was the
+easiest way to go about it.
+
+Sure enough, after a couple hours of playing around, I had something that
+worked reasonably well. A few more hours a day afterwards brought me to an
+`IRC::Client` that is usable in mostly the same way as the current
+`IRC::Client`, to save me effort in getting my current bots to make use of it
+for a few test runs.
+
+Geth was my main target, as I wanted it to stop from getting timed out so
+often. For the past week, Geth has been running stable, without any time
+out, so I think I've succeeded in the main goal.
+
+However, how to continue next? Since it is mostly compatible, but not
+*completely* compatible, if I were to adopt `IRC::Client` from the Raku
+ecosystem and push my version, many people's IRC bots would break when people
+update their dependencies. There is a solution for this built into the entire
+ecosystem, which is using the correct `:ver` and `:auth` (and in some cases,
+`:api`) so you can ensure your project is always getting the "correct"
+dependency. However, from personal experience, I know these additional
+dependency restrictions are rarely used in practice.
+
+I hope that with this blog post, I can inform the community in time about the
+changes that are coming to `IRC::Client`, so people have ample time to set
+their dependencies just right to keep their projects working. Of course, the
+real solution for the long term would be to make the small changes required to
+use the latest `IRC::Client` again.
+
+For convenience sake, I've added a small number of methods for backwards
+compatibility as well, though these will generate [a deprecation
+warning](https://docs.raku.org/routine/is%20DEPRECATED), and will be removed in
+a later `IRC::Client` release.
+
+There's two major changes that are not backwards compatible, however. The first
+one is the removal of the ability to have a single `IRC::Client` connect to
+multiple servers. This is also the easiest to remedy, by simply creating
+multiple instances of `IRC::Client`.
+
+The second major incompatible change is how events are dispatched to plugins.
+This used to be handled by going through all the plugins sequentially, allowing
+one plugin to stop the dispatch to another plugin. In my new version, events
+are dispatched to all plugins in parallel. This allows for faster execution,
+and for multiple plugins to handle an event without having to use `$*NEXT`
+(which has been removed). My main motivation is that a buggy plugin will no
+longer interfere with the interactions provided by other plugins. The ordering
+of your plugins will also stop being an issue to worry about.
+
+Geth's updates to actually use my updated `IRC::Client` module was introduced
+in
+[`edc6b08`](https://github.com/Raku/geth/commit/edc6b08036c8ede08afdea39fd1768655a2766aa),
+and most if it was updates to the way it handled logging. The actual changes
+needed to make Geth play nice were
+
+- [Adding the `IRC::Client::Plugin` role to `Geth::Plugin::Info`](https://github.com/Raku/geth/commit/edc6b08036c8ede08afdea39fd1768655a2766aa#diff-104b5cdb61f2aa423eb941ce32a4412b4cb814014728cae968e5aeff7dc587d2R14);
+- [And to `Geth::Plugin::Uptime`](https://github.com/Raku/geth/commit/edc6b08036c8ede08afdea39fd1768655a2766aa#diff-104b5cdb61f2aa423eb941ce32a4412b4cb814014728cae968e5aeff7dc587d2R24);
+- [Using `nicks` instead of `nick`](https://github.com/Raku/geth/commit/edc6b08036c8ede08afdea39fd1768655a2766aa#diff-104b5cdb61f2aa423eb941ce32a4412b4cb814014728cae968e5aeff7dc587d2R34);
+- [Using `start` instead of `run`](https://github.com/Raku/geth/commit/edc6b08036c8ede08afdea39fd1768655a2766aa#diff-104b5cdb61f2aa423eb941ce32a4412b4cb814014728cae968e5aeff7dc587d2R46);
+- [Using `privmsg` instead of `send`](https://github.com/Raku/geth/commit/edc6b08036c8ede08afdea39fd1768655a2766aa#diff-c388af832470886cdd4304aeb17c4c2f406ac184d33afb956b0ef8a92b69855bR57);
+
+The last two changes aren't strictly necessary, as there are backwards
+compatibility methods made for these, but it's a rather small change and
+reduces the amount of noise in the logs.
+
+With this, I hope everyone using `IRC::Client` is prepared for the coming
+changes. If you have any comments or questions, do not hesitate to reach out to
+me and share your thoughts!