spacemacs/layers/+chat/erc

ERC layer

• Description
• Features
• Install
  • Layer
  • OS X
  • Social graph
  • Default servers
    • Security Note
• Key bindings
• Spacemacs Layout Support

Description

Layer for ERC IRC chat.

Features

• Highlight nicks (using erc-hl-nicks)
• Image inline support (using erc-image)
• Logging to ~/.emacs.d/.cache/erc-logs and ViewLogMode for viewing logs (using erc-view-log)
• YouTube videos Thumbnails inline (using erc-yt)
• Social Graph for ERC messages (using erc-social-graph)
• ERC yank, if pasting more than 5 lines, create a gist for it. (needs to have github layer enabled, or using gist package)
• Optional SASL authentication via the variable erc-enable-sasl-auth (using erc-sasl)
• Gitter support! This includes clickable issue numbers, inline markdown highlighting, and more (check package doc). Go to irc.gitter.im to get credentials and use erc-tls to connect ( SPC a i E ).
• Completion of Emojis using company-emoji (still needs a way of showing, either using the emoji layer or having a proper font) 👏

Install

Layer

To use this configuration layer, add it to your ~/.spacemacs. You will need to add erc to the existing dotspacemacs-configuration-layers list in this file.

OS X

It's recommended to install the terminal-notifier gem so that you get notifications via the OS X Notification Center.

Social graph

erc-social-graph needs graphviz to be installed on your system.

Default servers

You can define the default servers in the ERC custom layout by setting the variable erc-server-list. Setting :ssl non nil will connect with erc-tls. You can also use <leader>aiD to connect to your default servers outside the custom layout.

(setq-default dotspacemacs-configuration-layers
             '((erc :variables
                    erc-server-list
                    '(("irc.freenode.net"
                       :port "6697"
                       :ssl t
                       :nick "some-user"
                       :password "secret")
                      ("irc.myworkirc.net"
                       :port "1234"
                       :nick "some-suit"
                       :password "hunter2")))))

Security Note

You should not store your passwords in the clear in your .spacemacs, and that goes double if you version your config file. ERC allows for a number of ways of protecting this information.

First, ERC will check your ~/.authinfo.gpg, looking for lines like

  machine <irc.server.url> login <yournick> password <yourpassword> port <portnumber>

You can omit :password in this case.

You could also set an environment variable (or otherwise secret variable) and read that in :password.

Key bindings

Key Binding	Description
SPC a i e	Starts ERC
SPC a i E	Starts ERC via TLS/SSL
SPC a i i	Switch to next active ERC buffer
SPC a i D	Start ERC with default servers
SPC m b	Switch between ERC buffers
SPC m d	Interactively input a user action and send it to IRC.
SPC m D	Draw Social Graph using erc-social-graph
SPC m j	Join a channel, executes the /join command
SPC m n	Run "/names #channel" in the current channel.
SPC m l	Run the /list command
SPC m p	Part from the channel
SPC m q	Quit server

Note: If you want to connect securely to an IRC server, you must run erc-tls command on SPC a i E instead of the erc command.

Spacemacs Layout Support

ERC buffers are added automatically to the default layout for ERC controlled by the variable erc-spacemacs-layout-name (defaults to "@ERC") and the default binding ("E") is controlled by erc-spacemacs-layout-binding