WeeChat Release Notes

When compiling WeeChat with CMake (which is the recommended way), errors are now displayed on any missing dependency, if the optional feature was enabled (most features are automatically enabled, except documentation, man page and tests).

Any error on a missing dependency is fatal, so WeeChat can not be compiled. This is a new behavior compared to old versions, where any missing dependency was silently ignored and the compilation was possible anyway.

For example if PHP is not installed on your system, CMake will display an error on missing PHP library:

Then you can either install PHP or explicitly disable PHP if you don’t need this plugin, using this cmake option:

The strings sent to script callbacks in Python 3 are now automatically converted according to the content:

In some cases only, the string may not be valid UTF-8, so it is received as bytes in the callback, which must take care of that.

For more information, see the WeeChat scripting guide: chapter about strings received in callbacks (see also issue #1389).

Note: there are no changes for Python 2 (which is now deprecated and should not be used any more), the strings sent to callbacks are always of type str, and may contain invalid UTF-8 data, in the cases mentioned in the WeeChat scripting guide.

A new server option called "charset_message" has been added, replacing the option irc.network.channel_encode.

This new server option has three possible values:

Files received via DCC (xfer plugin) now have a suffix ".part" during the transfer. When the transfer is successful, the suffix is removed.

This suffix can be customized with the new option xfer.file.download_temporary_suffix.

If you prefer the legacy behavior (no suffix added), you can set an empty value in the new option:

Python 3 is now used by default to compile the "python" plugin (no fallback on Python 2).

The CMake option ENABLE_PYTHON3 has been renamed to ENABLE_PYTHON2 (configure option --enable-python2). If this option is enabled, the "python" plugin is built with Python 2 (no fallback on Python 3).

The function to compute the colors based on the nick letters has been fixed (now the function uses only a 64-bit integer even if the underlying architecture is 32-bit).

If you’re running WeeChat on a 32-bit architecture and want to keep same colors as the previous releases, you can use one of the two new hash values.

If you were using "djb2", you can switch to "djb2_32":

If you were using "sum", you can switch to "sum_32":

The "aspell" plugin has been renamed to "spell", a more generic term, because it supports aspell and also enchant.

Consequently, the following things have been renamed as well:

If you are upgrading from a previous release, you can copy the config file before doing /upgrade, in WeeChat:

If you already upgraded WeeChat:

Once configuration is OK, you can delete the file ~/.weechat/aspell.conf.

Then you can search if you are using "aspell" in values of options:

If there are options displayed, replace "aspell" by "spell" in values.

The default key Alt+s can be changed to the new /spell command:

The option xfer.network.speed_limit has been renamed to xfer.network.speed_limit_send.

If you changed the value of this option, you must set it again after upgrade.

A new option xfer.network.speed_limit_recv has been added to limit the speed of received files.

The hook info callback now returns an allocated string, which must be freed after use (in previous versions, a pointer to a static string was returned).

Consequently, the function info_get returns an allocated string, which must be freed after use.

This affects only C code, no changes are required in scripts.

A space is not added automatically any more when you complete a nick at the beginning of command line.
Purpose of this change is to be more flexible: you can choose whether the space is added or not (it was always added in previous releases).

The default value of option weechat.completion.nick_completer has been changed to add the space by default, but the value of option is not changed automatically on upgrade.

So you can run this command if you upgraded from an old version and want the space still added automatically:

The functions to encode/decode base64 strings have been renamed and now support base 16, 32, and 64.

New functions in C API, supporting base 16, 32, and 64:

Functions removed from C API:

The default value for option weechat.look.hotlist_add_conditions has been changed to take care about the number of connected clients on the relay with weechat protocol: if at least one client is connected, the buffer is always added to the hotlist.

The new value contains three conditions, if one of them is true, the buffer is added to the hotlist:

To use the new default value, you can reset the option with this command:

Or set explicitly the value:

The existing triggers "cmd_pass" and "msg_auth" have been updated to hide password in command /msg nickserv set password and support the option -server xxx.

You can restore the default triggers with the following command:

The IRCv3 tags are now sent in these IRC signals for received messages (xxx is IRC server name, yyy is IRC command name):

This could break plugins or scripts that parse IRC messages and don’t expect to receive tags (even if tags are part of the IRC message, so this was a bug in the IRC signals).

See issue #787 for more information.

Now the whole IRC message is received by the signal callback, for example:

In older releases, this message was received:

A new Debian package has been added: weechat-headless which contains the binary weechat-headless and its man page.

In version 2.1, this binary was in the package weechat-curses.

A new option weechat.completion.partial_completion_templates has been added to force partial completion on some templates. By default, the option name completed in /set and /help commands are now using partial completion.

If you prefer old behavior, you can remove the templates from the new option with this command:

For more information about this feature, you can read help with:

A configuration file has been added for each script plugin: python.conf, perl.conf, ruby.conf, …​

Therefore the option to check license of loaded scripts has been moved from plugins.var.<language>.check_license (type: string) to the plugin configuration file (type: boolean, default is off).

List of options moved:

A new plugin "fset" has been added, it replaces the script iset.pl and has many new features.

By default the fset plugin changes the behavior of /set command when it is used with only an option name: it opens the fset buffer if at least one option is found.

The old behavior was to display the list of options in the core buffer.

If you prefer the old behavior, you can restore it with this command:

For more information about this feature, you can read help with:

The Debian packaging has changed (for now only on weechat.org repositories, not in Debian official repositories).
The package weechat-plugins has been split into 9 packages:

If you are using the packages from weechat.org, you will have to install manually the scripting packages (according to the languages you’ll use in WeeChat), for example Python/Perl only:

For development packages:

The evaluation of expressions in buflist options is not recursive any more, to prevent too many evaluations, for example in buffer variables (see issue #1060 for more information).
If you are using custom variables/options containing evaluated expressions, like ${some.config.option}, and if this option contains evaluated strings (${…​}), you must evaluate them with: ${eval:${some.config.option}}.

In scripts, the arguments status, gnutls_rc and sock sent to the callback of hook_connect are now integers (they were strings in older releases).
To be compatible with all versions, it is recommended to convert the argument to integer before using it, for example in Python: int(sock).

In scripts, the argument fd sent to the callback of hook_fd is now an integer (it was a string in older releases).
To be compatible with all versions, it is recommended to convert the argument to integer before using it, for example in Python: int(fd).

A new plugin called "buflist" has been added, it replaces the script "buffers.pl".

If the script is installed, you will see two sidebars with list of buffers.

If you fell in love with buflist and that the script buffers.pl is installed, you can uninstall the script and remove its bar with these commands:

If you don’t want the list of buffers, you can disable buflist:

To save extra memory, you can even unload the buflist plugin, remove the bar and prevent the plugin from loading on next startup:

The option script.scripts.url_force_https has been removed because now the site weechat.org can only be used with HTTPS.
Both HTTP and HTTPS protocols are allowed in the option script.scripts.url. For http://weechat.org/ an automatic redirection to https://weechat.org/ will occur, so you should check that the CA certificates are properly installed on your machine.

Aspell option with color for suggestion on a misspelled word has been renamed:

A new configuration file "fifo.conf" has been added and the old option plugins.var.fifo.fifo has been moved to fifo.file.enabled.

A new option fifo.file.path can be used to customize the FIFO pipe path/filename.

A new trigger "cmd_pass_register" has been added to hide only password and not email in command /msg nickserv register password email.
The existing trigger "cmd_pass" has been updated to hide password in all commands except /msg nickserv register.

You can add the new trigger and restore the other one with the following command:

Server options with default messages for kick/part/quit have been renamed:

If you changed the value of these options, you must set them again after upgrade.

Some "printf" functions have been removed from C API (there were not in scripting API):

The function "printf_date_tags" must now be used instead of these functions (the two functions removed were just C macros on function "printf_date_tags" with tags set to NULL for "printf_date" and date set to 0 for "printf_tags").

The nick coloring feature has been moved from irc plugin to core.

Two options have been moved from irc plugin (irc.conf) to core (weechat.conf), and you must set new value if you customized them:

The default value for option weechat.look.nick_color_hash is now djb2 instead of sum.

The following info names (used by API function "info_get") are renamed as well:

A pointer has been added in all callbacks used by scripts, so the callbacks will receive an extra const void *pointer before the void *data (in the C API only, not scripting API).

This is used to remove linked list of callbacks in scrips (improve speed, reduce memory usage).

Following functions are changed in the C API:

The function unhook_all has a new argument const char *subplugin to remove only hooks created by this "subplugin" (script).

The bar item "away" has been moved from irc plugin to core (so that away status can be displayed for any plugin, using the buffer local variable "away").

Two options have been moved from irc plugin (irc.conf) to core (weechat.conf):

The default triggers "cmd_pass" and "msg_auth" have been updated to include nickserv commands "recover" and "regain".

You can restore them with the following command:

The option irc.network.alternate_nick has been moved into servers (irc.server_default.nicks_alternate and irc.server.xxx.nicks_alternate).

If you disabled this option, you must switch it off again, globally or by server.

Globally (default value for all servers):

For a specific server:

If you are using exotic charsets in your channel names (anything different from UTF-8, like ISO charset), you should turn on a new option:

This will force WeeChat to decode/encode the channel name (like WeeChat 1.2 or older did).

See these issues for more information: issue #482, issue #218.

The command /alias has been updated to list, add and remove aliases. Therefore the command /unalias has been removed.

To add an alias, the argument add must be used in command /alias before the name, for example:

And the alias is removed with this command:

The option script.scripts.dir has been renamed to script.scripts.path (and the content is now evaluated, see /help eval).

If you changed the value of this option, you must set it again after upgrade.

A new format is used in regex replacement to use regex groups, this format is incompatible with version 1.0.

The existing triggers are NOT automatically updated.

Moreover, default triggers used to hide passwords have been fixed for *BSD operating systems.

You can restore them with the following command:

If you added triggers with the old regex replacement format, you must update them manually.

The command of "beep" trigger is now executed only if the message is displayed (not filtered with /filter).

You can restore the default "beep" trigger with the following command:

The API function weechat_command now sends the value returned return by command callback.

WeeChat does not display any more an error when a command returns WEECHAT_RC_ERROR. Consequently, all plugins/scripts should display an explicit error message before returning WEECHAT_RC_ERROR.

For C plugins, two macros have been added in weechat-plugin.h: WEECHAT_COMMAND_MIN_ARGS and WEECHAT_COMMAND_ERROR.

WeeChat now completes by default inline commands (not only at beginning of line).

When this feature is enabled, there is no more automatic completion of absolute paths (except if you are completing a path inside a command argument, like /dcc send <nick> <path>).

To restore the old behavior (no completion of inline commands):

The option relay.irc.backlog_tags is now a list separated by commas (it was separated by semicolons in older versions).

If you are using a list of tags in this option, you must adjust the value manually.

The string "::ffff:" has been removed from IPv4-mapped IPv6 client address in relay plugin.

If you are using "::ffff:" in option relay.network.allowed_ips, you can remove it.

Creating a temporary server with command /connect <address> or /connect irc://... is now forbidden by default.

A new option has been added to unlock the feature, you can do that for the old behavior in command /connect:

The API functions using timeval are now using or returning microseconds, instead of milliseconds:

The channel type is not any more automatically added to a channel name on join (for example /join weechat will not send /join #weechat).

If you are lazy and want to automatically add the channel type, you can turn on the new option:

The option irc.look.item_channel_modes_hide_key has been renamed to irc.look.item_channel_modes_hide_args and is now a string.
It can now hide arguments for multiple channel modes.

By default, a channel key (mode "k") will hide channel arguments. For old behavior (never hide arguments, even with a channel key), you can do:

The command /input jump_last_buffer has been replaced by /buffer +. You can rebind the key Alt+j, Alt+l (L):

Similarly, a new key has been added to jump to first buffer: Alt+j, Alt+f. You can add it with following command:

A new option weechat.look.hotlist_add_conditions has been added. This option replaces the option weechat.look.hotlist_add_buffer_if_away, which has been removed.

Default conditions are ${away} || ${buffer.num_displayed} == 0, which means that a buffer is added in hotlist if you are away ("away" local variable is set), or if the buffer is not visible on screen (not displayed in any window).

If you have set weechat.look.hotlist_add_buffer_if_away to off (to not add current buffer in hotlist when you are away), then you must manually change the default conditions with the following command:

The trigger plugin replaces the rmodifier plugin, which has been removed (and trigger has much more features than rmodifier).

Default triggers have same features as default rmodifiers (to hide passwords in commands and output).

If you added some custom rmodifiers, you must create similar triggers, see /help trigger and the complete trigger doc in the WeeChat User’s guide.

A bare display mode has been added (for easy text selection and click on URLs), the new default key is Alt+l (L).

Use command /key missing to add the key or /key listdiff to see differences between your current keys and WeeChat default keys.

In scripts, the arguments displayed and highlight sent to the callback of hook_print are now integers (they were strings in older releases).
To be compatible with all versions, it is recommended to convert the argument to integer before testing it, for example in Python: if int(highlight):.

The color code for "reverse video" in IRC message has been fixed: now WeeChat uses 0x16 like other clients (and not 0x12 any more).
The code 0x12 is not decoded any more, so if it is received (for example from an old WeeChat version), it is not displayed as reverse video.

The color code for "underlined text" in input line has been fixed: now WeeChat uses 0x1F, the same code sent to IRC server.

The default keys for "reverse video" and "underlined text" have changed:

You can remove the old keys and add the new ones with these commands:

The boolean option weechat.look.set_title has been renamed to weechat.look.window_title and is now a string.

The content is evaluated and the default value is WeeChat ${info:version}.

The bar item buffer_count now displays the number of opened buffers (each merged buffer counts 1).

The new bar item buffer_last_number displays the highest buffer number currently used.

If you want to display last number in the status bar, replace buffer_count by buffer_last_number in your option weechat.bar.status.items.

A new bar item has been added: buffer_zoom. The default value for status bar items becomes:

The names are not displayed any more by default on channel join (they are in nicklist anyway).

Names can be displayed with the value "353" in option irc.look.display_join_message (which is not in default value).
The value "366" shows only names count on channel.

If you want to display all messages on join (including names), you can do:

Option irc.network.lag_max has been added.

The value of option irc.network.lag_reconnect (if set to non-zero value) must be less than or equal to irc.network.lag_max, otherwise the reconnection will never occur.

You should check the value of both options and fix them if needed.

The day change message is now dynamically displayed, and therefore is not stored as a line in buffer any more.

Option weechat.look.day_change_time_format has been split into two options weechat.look.day_change_message{1date|2dates}_ (color codes are allowed in these options, see /help eval).

New color option weechat.color.chat_day_change has been added.

After /upgrade from an old version, you will see two messages for each day change. This is a normal behavior and will not happen again with the next day changes.

Search with regular expression has been added, and therefore some keys in search context have been changed.

The key Ctrl+r in search context is now used to switch string/regex search (instead of searching exact text).

If you never changed keys in search context, you can reset them all with one command:

Or the manual method:

To view keys in search context:

For more information, see the chapter about keys in the WeeChat User’s guide.

A new rmodifier "secure" has been added to hide passphrase and passwords displayed by command /secure. Use command /rmodifier missing to add it.

The format for color codes in some options has changed. The options are evaluated with the function "string_eval_expression", which uses the format ${color:xxx}.

Following options are affected:

The options using old format ${xxx} must be changed with new format ${color:xxx} (where xxx is a color name or number, with optional color attributes).

Example:

WeeChat binary and man page have been renamed from weechat-curses to weechat.

A symbolic link has been added for binary: weechat-curses → weechat (so that the /upgrade from a old version will still work).

If you upgrade from an old version, it is recommended to force the use of the new binary name with the command: /upgrade /path/to/weechat (replace the path accordingly).

Documentation is not built by default any more, you have to use option -DENABLE_DOC=ON in cmake command to enable it.

The man page is now built with asciidoc and translated in several languages. A new CMake option ENABLE_MAN has been added to compile man page (OFF by default).

Option aspell.look.color has been renamed to aspell.color.misspelled.

If you changed the value of this option, you must set it again after upgrade.

A new message with identifier "_nicklist_diff" has been added in relay (WeeChat protocol). WeeChat may decide to send full nicklist or this nicklist diff at any time (depending on size of message, the smaller is sent).

Clients using nicklist must implement it.

For more info about content of message, see document WeeChat Relay Protocol.

The nick prefix/suffix (for example: "<" and ">") are now dynamic and used on display (not stored any more in the line).

Options moved from irc plugin (irc.conf) to core (weechat.conf):

Types and default values for these four options remain unchanged.

Two new options to customize the truncature char (by default “+”):

When these options are enabled (default), the “+” is displayed after the text, replacing the space that should be displayed there.
When turned off, the “+” will replace last char of text.

Example for a nicks "FlashCode" and "fc" with different values for options weechat.look.prefix_align_max, weechat.look.prefix_align_more_after, weechat.look.nick_prefix and weechat.look.nick_suffix:

After /upgrade, if you set new options to non-empty strings, and if old options were set to non-empty strings too, you will see double prefix/suffix on old messages, this is normal behavior (lines displayed before /upgrade have prefix/suffix saved in prefix, but new lines don’t have them any more).

New options in logger plugin (logger.conf):

Option irc.network.lag_disconnect has been renamed to irc.network.lag_reconnect and value is now a number of seconds (instead of minutes).

If you changed the value of this option, you must set it again after upgrade.

IRC plugin is now using modifiers "irc_command_auth" and "irc_message_auth" to hide passwords.

The option irc.look.hide_nickserv_pwd has been removed, and a new option irc.look.nicks_hide_password has been added (by default passwords are hidden only for "nickserv").

A new rmodifier "message_auth" has been added to hide passwords displayed by command /msg nickserv identify|register|ghost|release and the rmodifier "nickserv" has been renamed to "command_auth".

If you never added/changed rmodifiers, you can just reset all rmodifiers:

If you added/changed some rmodifiers, do it manually with these commands:

For consistency with other supported languages, the API constants in Lua have been redefined as constants instead of functions.

Therefore, the use of a constant must be changed: the parentheses must be removed.

The old syntax was:

The new syntax is:

The way to give arguments for guile callbacks has been fixed: now arguments are sent individually (instead of a list with all arguments inside).

Therefore, existing guile scripts must be modified accordingly. Moreover, WeeChat now requires Guile ≥ 2.0 to compile.

Conditions in bars have changed, and now an expression is evaluated.

If you have a value with many conditions in a bar, like: nicklist,active, you must now use an expression like: ${nicklist} && ${active} (see the chapter about bars in the WeeChat User’s guide).

Options moved from core (weechat.conf) to irc plugin (irc.conf):

A new bar item has been added: buffer_modes and irc option irc.look.item_channel_modes has been removed; to display irc channel modes in status bar (after channel name), you have to manually add the new item buffer_modes (this is now used by default in status bar items), default value for status bar items becomes:

New options in command /aspell:

Options renamed in command /aspell:

An horizontal separator has been added between split windows, and two options have been added to toggle separators (both are enabled by default):

New keys were added, use command /key missing to add them or /key listdiff to see differences between your current keys and WeeChat default keys.

Options weechat.look.prefix_align_more and weechat.look.prefix_buffer_align_more have been converted from type boolean to string:

Option weechat.look.paste_max_lines can now be used with value 0 to detect paste with one line (only if terminal "bracketed paste mode" is enabled when option weechat.look.paste_bracketed is on); so now the value -1 is used to disable paste detection: if your value was 0, you should set it to -1:

Rmodifier "nickserv" has a new default regex which includes option "release" for command /msg nickserv.

If you never added/changed rmodifiers, you can just reset all rmodifiers:

If you added/changed some rmodifiers, do it manually with these commands:

Option scroll_unread has been moved from command /input to /window, therefore default command of key Alt+u has been updated. To bind key with new default value:

Option weechat.history.max_lines has been renamed to weechat.history.max_buffer_lines_number.

If you changed the value of this option, you must set it again after upgrade.

Option weechat.plugin.extension now supports list of extensions, and new default value is ".so,.dll" (with this value, weechat.conf is compatible with Cygwin).

Extended regex is used in filters and irc ignore, so some chars that needed escape in past do not need any more (for example [0-9]\+ becomes [0-9]+), filters and ignore have to be manually fixed.

Option weechat.look.highlight_regex becomes case insensitive by default, to make it case sensitive, use "(?-i)" at beginning of string, for example: "(?-i)FlashCode|flashy".

Option weechat.look.hline_char has been renamed to weechat.look.separator_horizontal.

If you changed the value of this option, you must set it again after upgrade.

Bold is not used any more for basic colors (used only if terminal has less than 16 colors), a new option has been added to force bold if needed: weechat.look.color_basic_force_bold.

If you have some colors defined in section "palette" with version 0.3.4, you should remove all colors defined, and add new aliases (it’s not needed any more to add colors before using them).

Colors for nick prefixes (char for op, voice, ..) are defined in a single option irc.color.nick_prefixes, therefore following options will be lost: irc.color.nick_prefix_op, irc.color.nick_prefix_halfop, irc.color.nick_prefix_voice, irc.color.nick_prefix_user.

New keys were added, use command /key missing to add them or /key listdiff to see differences between your current keys and WeeChat default keys.

If you are using /upgrade from a previous release:

Some IRC options have been renamed, before upgrading to this version, note value for old options, and set them again with new name:

If you are using /upgrade from a previous release, then you must reconnect to IRC servers in order to use new command /wallchops.

Option irc.look.show_away_once has been renamed to irc.look.display_pv_away_once.

Option irc.network.lag_min_show is now in milliseconds, you should set new value: your current value multiplied by 1000 (new default value is 500).

If you are using /upgrade from a previous release, then you must execute this command on all IRC servers/channels/private buffers and xfer DCC chats (not needed on WeeChat core buffer or buffers from other plugins/scripts):

IRC commands /ame and /amsg are now aliases, if you are upgrading from version 0.3.0, you must create aliases with following commands:

For users of any previous version, all your charset settings in weechat.rc will be LOST! You should save your weechat.rc to keep your values and set them again with new charset plugin.

For ISO users: history of channels may be without accents (after /upgrade), this is not recoverable, but this is not a bug. All new messages should be OK.

Be careful, now default encode is UTF-8 for all channels (before it was terminal charset). If you still want to send messages as ISO-8859-1, you should set either global encode or server specific encode to ISO-8859-1.

For global encode:

For server encode (on server buffer):

New keys for topic scroll: F9/F10.

Key F10 was used for infobar_clear in previous WeeChat versions, you have to manually rebind this key (except for new WeeChat users):

Which gives something like:

If you upgraded with /upgrade in WeeChat, you should /disconnect and then /reconnect on each server, to display properly channel/user modes.

If you’re using plugins, you should remove some old plugins libraries in WeeChat system library directory (commonly /usr/local/lib/weechat/plugins): remove lib* files (like libperl., libpython., ..) and keep only new libraries (perl., python., ..).

Please close all DCC chat buffers before using /upgrade command, otherwise you may experience problems with DCC chats.

Some changes in script API: now timer handlers functions takes exactly 0 (zero) argument (in version 0.1.8, two arguments were mandatory but not used: server and arguments).

After installing 0.1.8 (or with /upgrade), issue both commands (if you didn’t redefine these keys (Alt+Home / Alt+End):

Then launch again WeeChat (or issue /upgrade).

It is recommended for users of version 0.1.7 (or any older), to replace values in setup file (~/.weechat/weechat.rc):

The string %h is replaced by WeeChat home (default: ~/.weechat, may be overridden by new command line argument --dir).

Keys Alt+Home / Alt+End were used for nicklist scroll, they’re now replaced by Alt+F11 / Alt+F12.

Ruby script plugin has been added but is experimental in this release. You’re warned!

Command /away was changed to be RFC 2812 compliant. Now argument is required to set away, and no argument means remove away ("back").

Option irc_default_msg_away has been removed.

Incompatibility with some old scripts: now all handlers have to return a code for completion, and to do some actions about message to ignore (please look at documentation for detail).

On OpenBSD, the new option plugins_extension should be set to .so.0.0 since the plugins names are ending by .so.0.0 and not .so.

With new and full UTF-8 support, the option look_charset_internal should be set to blank for most cases. Forces it only if your locale is not properly detected by WeeChat (you can set UTF-8 or ISO-8859-15 for example, depending on your locale). WeeChat is looking for UTF-8 in your locale name at startup.