Lirch [lərtʃ] is an program that allows you to chat with other people on your local network. It is meant to replicate the IRC protocol as closely as possible, with some potential extensions. (As you might have noticed, you can't spell Lirch without IRC, but there are a few things tacked-on.)

1. Providing a simple and intuitive method for digital communication with those near you
2. Multiple use patterns:
   • A Qt4-based GUI, designed for easy use by normal end-users
   • A curses-based interface, designed for advanced users and/or those desiring light-weight installs
3. File transfer capabilities (unicast to single users or multicast to a channel)
4. Private (encrypted) sub-channels using pre-shared keys
5. The ability to persist conversations to a variety of log formats

Chat about the project in the Lirch IRC channel, #Lirch, on Freenode.

Lirch uses the BSD license, so it is open-source software. (See ./LICENSE and ./CONTRIBUTORS.)

The prefered way to build Lirch is through CMake. (highly recommended)

Lirch leverages some of the new features of C++11. (Awesome!) Most of our developers use a *nix operating system. (Cool!) Generally, we prefer using gcc, specifically g++ 4.6 or better. (Okay!) So for the moment, this is our initial target build platform. (Yay?)

On Windows, we are working toward developing a build process for VS11 Beta. (This version or better is required for C++11. Booo!) We are also curious about Clang. Any assistance toward getting additional build platforms working would be much appreciated.

1. Create a directory to perform the build. ../lirch-build is a good choice. We will use this in our example.
2. Navigate to this directory. We will assume the source is located in ../lirch-source; if not, adjust accordingly.
3. From here, point cmake to the top source directory, which contains a file named CMakeLists.txt. We will use the curses interface to cmake, ccmake: ccmake ../lirch-source
   • You can also select from a variety of generators, using (c)cmake's -G argument. See cmake for list.
4. Use the keyboard to select the desired build options. You will need Qt4.8. Press c to configure, then g to generate.
5. If you used a Makefile generator option, run make. Otherwise, load the project into your desired environment.

Happy Coding!