Netzwelt, Web Dump, Windows Irssi 0.8.10 for Windows (Cygwin/Win32)

Jan 16, 2007 • by Nei

(Update the download has been removed but I preserve the post for itself. Please install irssi from Cygwin’s setup.exe)

This has been in my static folder at least since the official release of that version, but I hadn’t posted it on the website yet.

Back in the days, when I was looking for a Windows version of this rather popular *nix IRC client, they did not have a single working link on their website/ download page http://irssi.org/!

Of course you can always tell the users to “just build it yourself”, but seriously, which average user is capable of doing that?

So after researching the Internet and not finding any suitable Windows build of Irssi, I decided to fix that gap myself. So I created above build.

When I checked back at the time of writing this entry, they now link to a build of Irssi 0.8.9 on their download page; I would claim that this is no official build (but maybe they’ve gotten the creators permission to hot-link (deep-link) it).

I believe I had already found this build at the time when I was looking for one, and the website didn’t have any; but not only is it outdated (version-wise), it also does not support Perl, Irssi’s premier scripting binding. Since I like to enhance my client with several scripts, that was no good.

Also, there is a new feature called “recode” in Irssi 0.8.10, which (although it ultimately sucks) enables you to chat in places where ISO-8859 and UTF8 charsets are in mixed use.

Given these two reasons, the 0.8.9 version of Irssi was not an option to me.

For those interested in making their own Irssi/Cygwin builds on Windows, I’ve written down the necessary steps. Hit the jump to read them.

 1# Make a default install of cygwin            (58.2MB)
 2# Add the folling packages:
    a. Devel/gcc-core                           (52MB)
    b. Devel/gcc-g++                            (23MB)
    c. Devel/gettext and
       Devel/gettext-devel (missing libintl.a)  (10MB)
    d. Devel/libncurses-devel (terminfo support)
    e. Devel/make                                (1MB)
    f. Devel/pkgconfig (detects glib2)
    g. Interpreters/perl                        (33MB)
    h. Libs/glib2 and
       Libs/glib2-devel                          (4MB)
    i. Libs/openssl and
       Libs/openssl-devel                       (10MB)

 3# Download the Irssi sourcecode from their website and save it to C:/cygwin/home/Username
    (If you want to use svn, you'll need additional cygwin packages, e.g. automake.)
 4# Start cygwin
 5# tar xzvf irssi-*.tar.gz
 6# cd ./irssi-0.8.10*
 7# ./configure --with-perl-staticlib --prefix=/cygdrive/c/irssi
 8# make
 9# make install
10# now you can start irssi with C:/irssi/bin/irssi.exe

Comment #1

Thanks for this! I was waiting for a new package like this for a while. :)

I have two problems though:

1. Each time I start it, I get the following:

4 [main] irssi 2348 _dll_crt0: internal error: couldn’t determine location of thread function on stack. Expect signal problems.

I had the same thing with blaze’s cygwin package.. any ideas?

UTF-8 doesn’t work correctly. I can’t write or receive UTF8 chars properly. Recode works somewhat, but still not perfect with incoming chars like ‘?’.

Got any ideas?

			by sweetsour 
		2007, January 31 (Wed)@ 18:46

Comment #2

I’m glad you have a use for it.

Unfortunately, I’m a bit at lack when it comes to helping you. Does your first issue actually cause any real problems? Google seems to have some hits searching for “_dll_crt0”; it might stem from an update introduced into Cygwin after this version of Irssi was put together.

As for Unicode UTF-8, if you are using the PuTTY version shipped with the archive, make sure you set Window/ Translation to UTF-8 (click on the system menu in the upper left corner to configure PuTTY).

Also make sure you’ve configured Irssi correctly (/set term_charset utf-8 etc.)

			by Nei 
		2007, January 31 (Wed)@ 19:10

Comment #3

Hey!

Thanks for the reply.

Turns out the irssi 2348 _dll_crt0: error was because of Outpost Firewall. They fixed CYGWIN compatibility in their latest release.

While UTF-8 still doesn’t work great with putty, your reply was useful, now I set the charset matching my locality in putty, and with recode enabled it’s usable.. as long as noone uses japanese characters or whatever. :)

			by sweetsour 
		2007, February 13 (Tue)@ 19:12

Comment #4

Wow, that’s interesting to know that this was caused by your firewall, thanks for the follow-up.

Please see my guide on Irssi, PuTTY and UTF-8 for how to get Unicode to work “properly” (recode will still work, but now you can recode to the full Unicode range). (warning: image heavy.)

			by Nei 
		2007, February 15 (Thu)@ 00:53

Comment #5

Hello,

Are you going to release a Windows binary of the recently-released irssi 0.8.11? I tried compiling irssi myself under Cygwin, but it doesn’t run on any computer except my own, even when I copy all of the same Cygwin DLLs and the ‘terminfo’ folder and batch files supplied in your irssi 0.8.10 binary release.

Thanks very much.

			by Josh Dick 
		2007, May 06 (Sun)@ 21:24

Comment #6

Hi Josh,

thanks for your comment. Since I have neither Windows around anymore nor use Irssi, I don’t have any active plans to do so.

Maybe your copy is just missing some files on the other computers where you try to run it? Try starting it from a Windows Command Prompt with irssi.exe -d, that might enable you to see some error messages.

			by Nei 
		2007, May 08 (Tue)@ 14:38

Comment #7

Hello again,

I was actually able to get 0.8.11 working after all…I had to copy Cygwin’s perl modules folder into irssi’s perl modules folder.

I’ve built a 0.8.11 package based on your 0.8.10 package and instructions. It’s available at http://joshdick.net/programming/irssi-win32-0.8.11.exe and I’d like to publicly distribute it with your permission (since it’s based on your older release and includes your batch files, etc.) I gave plenty of credit to you in the README.

Would distributing this publicly be okay?

Thanks,

Josh

			by Josh Dick 
		2007, May 09 (Wed)@ 21:50

Comment #8

Congrats on getting it to work.

I don’t have any personal problem with you doing so. Make sure you understand the implications of the GPL and other licenses of programs included in the package, however.

In the end, I am not the one who is able to give you these permissions ;-)

			by Nei 
		2007, May 10 (Thu)@ 12:13

Comment #9

Question:

Would it be possible to run irssi in combination with screen or the like, so you can use the nicklist.pl plugin?

-Ghost-

			by Ghostshaw 
		2007, June 22 (Fri)@ 12:16

Comment #10

This is indeed possible, but not quite trivial.

Probably the easiest way to get this working is to compile irssi yourself inside of Cygwin, because that will give you the benefit of having a complete working Cygwin environment, including the Unix-like bash shell and directory management. (This isn’t strictly necessary though.)

Next, you’ll want to find a version of GNU screen that works on Windows. Screen version 3 is sufficient for the nicklist, you don’t necessarily need screen 4.

Finally, the way the nicklist gets information about your terminal size is not platform-independent, so you will have to replace it with a call to `stty` – compare with my adv_windowlist.pl on how to do that.

Now all that’s left is to start “screen.exe irssi” inside of one of the start files, and look at that, you’ve got a nicklist-powered irssi running directly on Windows.

Good luck!

			by Nei 
		2007, June 24 (Sun)@ 15:50

Comment #11

Just stopping by to confirm your directions working for irssi-0.8.12-rc1 version, I tried doing to just manually but must have missed one of those packadges and kept getting an errors with the perl folders. Thanks alot for this info!

			by Andrew X 
		2007, August 31 (Fri)@ 07:59

Comment #12

Thanks for this. Worked for me.

			by wooden 
		2007, September 02 (Sun)@ 21:12

Comment #13

I followed your instructions for 0.8.12 and everything worked except for one thing, when I run irssi.exe using “run irssi.exe” it comes up with the blue bars but then immediately goes back to bash without letting me input any commands.

			by Randy 
		2007, October 19 (Fri)@ 05:34

Comment #14

i downloaded the windows installer and im having trouble figuring out where to place scripts and themes to make them work. help!

			by chozen1 
		2009, May 08 (Fri)@ 02:15

Comment #15

I have compiled irssi-python in cygwin environment, but I can’t figure out where to put the binary lib - libpython.a and libpython.la

I tried to put them in .\lib\irssi\modules\ and also .\modules, but /load doesn’t work on neither of them.

Where does irssi load modelues from in cygwin version?

Thanks.

			by nessus 
		2009, September 14 (Mon)@ 13:53

Comment #16

Hello. I just downloaded irssi-0.8.14.tar.gz and followed your instructions for compiling with cygwin. I did this on windows server 2008. It worked perfectly as far as I can tell so far, as I’ve only connected to a couple of servers. Thank you very much, d.

			by d 
		2009, December 14 (Mon)@ 05:06

Comment #17

Hello there, I have problem even with starting my irssi up. I have already installed irssi on my windows but clcking on irssi (windows NT command script) I usually get smth like : windows cannot find path to irssi.cmd

please help me and if you could answer also send on zofy11@gmail.com

THX

			by zofy 
		2010, July 03 (Sat)@ 20:39

Comment #18

Is this still up?

Im stuck on step #8

Cant find the make directory.

Where can I get it?

			by snakez 
		2015, June 16 (Tue)@ 10:57

Comment #19

@snakez this is a command that you type on the command line in MinTTY. These days I’d recommend you simply install irssi from Cygwin’s setup.exe instead, though.

			by Nei 
		2015, June 17 (Wed)@ 22:46

Comment #20

Cygwin’s current irssi installer is actually broken (wrong perl version), so these instructions were rather handy. With minor adjustments they still work, thanks!

			by Friction 
		2015, September 29 (Tue)@ 18:26