WeeChat Release Notes

The detection of libgcrypt has been fixed to properly detect libgcrypt >= 1.11.
As a consequence, the detection of an old version of libgcrypt is failing if the file libgcrypt.pc is not found.
This affects old distributions like Debian Buster and Ubuntu Bionic.

The following relay options have been renamed:

The lag is now stored in all IRC buffers: server (like it always has been), channels and private buffers.

Consequently, if you use ${format_lag} in buflist options, this lag will be displayed on server and all channels and private buffers.

If you want to display the lag only on server buffer in buflist, you can use such format:

The option irc.color.item_channel_modes has been moved to core and renamed to weechat.color.status_modes.

The signal "buffer_line_added" is now sent for every line added or modified on a buffer with free content.

Some arguments to the /script command were renamed in version 4.1.0, but the keys using these arguments were not changed at same time.

They’re now using the new arguments by default, but you must reset manually the keys with the following commands:

Some arguments to the /script command were renamed in version 4.1.0, but the keys using these arguments were not changed at same time.

They’re now using the new arguments by default, but you must reset manually the keys with the following commands:

Microseconds have been added in buffer lines (for both date and printed date).

Here are the changes that could affect plugins and scripts:

The anti-flood mechanism in IRC plugin has been improved and is now configured in milliseconds instead of seconds.
It is done with a single option irc.server_default.anti_flood (and same option in servers), which replaces both options anti_flood_prio_high and anti_flood_prio_low.

The default value is 2000 (2 seconds), and for example if you want to set a delay of 0.5 seconds between your messages sent:

When upgrading from an old WeeChat version, you’ll see such messages, which are perfectly normal (they’re displayed to warn you about unknown options, and then you have to set the new option if needed):

Search in commands history has been added with new keys and a new key context called "histsearch".

Some existing keys have been moved as well.

New keys can be changed and added with the following commands after upgrade from an old WeeChat version:

Support for RGB colors in IRC messages has been added and a new key Ctrl+c, d is available to insert this color code in command line.

You can add this key with this command:

Custom bar items must now have a different name than default bar items (for example the custom bar item name time is now forbidden).
If you have such names in your config, WeeChat will now fail to load them (this should not happen anyway, since such bar items can not be properly used or can cause a crash of WeeChat).

The infos irc_nick_color and irc_nick_color_name are deprecated again, and the algorithm to compute IRC nick colors has been reverted to case sensitive.
The server name has been removed from arguments.

Custom bar items must now have a different name than default bar items (for example the custom bar item name time is now forbidden).
If you have such names in your config, WeeChat will now fail to load them (this should not happen anyway, since such bar items can not be properly used or can cause a crash of WeeChat).

New keys have been added to move in cursor mode, and existing keys to move to another area have been changed: modifier is now Alt+Shift instead of Alt.

You can change existing keys and add new ones with these commands:

IRC CTCP replies are now evaluated, with the same variables available, so now the syntax is for example ${version} instead of $version.
The existing options irc.ctcp.* are automatically converted on upgrade.

In addition, for privacy reasons, these default CTCP replies have been removed:

If ever you want that WeeChat replies to these CTCP requests, you can add them back with the two following commands:

They will then be advertised in reply to "CTCP CLIENTINFO", which is now built dynamically with these options.

Two infos to get nick colors have been added: nick_color_ignore_case and nick_color_name_ignore_case.
They are similar to nick_color and nick_color_name, except they take as second argument a range of chars to apply on the nick: the nick is converted to lower case using this range of chars.

The infos irc_nick_color and irc_nick_color_name, that were deprecated since version 1.5 are now used again, with a change in parameter: the server is now optional before the nick: "server,nick".
The nick is first converted to lower case, following the value of CASEMAPPING on the server, then hashed to compute the color.
That means the color for a nick is now case insensitive (in the way IRC servers are case insensitive, so with a limited range of chars only).

If a script was using this info with a comma in nickname (which should not happen anyway), this is now interpreted as the server name, and the script must be modified.
Anyway, it is recommended to always give the server name to respect the CASEMAPPING of the server and prevent any issue with a comma in the nickname.

For example nick color of "alice" and "ALICE" is now always guaranteed to be the same:

A new variable allowed_values has been added in fset options.

The default value for the second format has changed.
You can reset it with this command:

Mouse actions on fset buffer has been fixed when option fset.look.format_number is set to 2.

The key for button 1 on fset buffer has been fixed.
You can reset it with this command:

Custom bar items must now have a different name than default bar items (for example the custom bar item name time is now forbidden).

If you have such names in your config, WeeChat will now fail to load them (this should not happen anyway, since such bar items can not be properly used and can cause a crash of WeeChat).

The functions config_set_plugin and config_set_desc_plugin are not converting any more the option name to lower case because since version 4.0.0, the name of options is case sensitive.

Key Alt+K (upper case) has been removed, as well as commands /input grab_raw_key and /input grab_raw_key_command.

Now the key Alt+k displays the actual key name and command, possibly raw key.

Support of new capabilities has been introduced in this version and are all enabled by default, if the server supports them:

When the capability "echo-message" is enabled, you may notice time before your own IRC messages are displayed in the buffer, this is normal : the capability forces the server to sent back messages, and WeeChat displays messages only when they are received from the server.

If you want to disable this capability on all servers, you can do:

If you are already connected to a server with echo-message enabled, just ask the server to disable the capability on-the-fly (no need to reconnect):

A version has been introduced in configuration file, and due to the many breaking changes (listed in the chapters below), the following files are automatically upgraded to a new version:

The format of key bindings has changed to be more user-friendly, and this is a breaking change: legacy keys are automatically converted, but some triggers, plugins or scripts might need manual changes.

Overview of new features:

See Key bindings improvements specification for more information.

Many identifiers are made case sensitive, including among others:

See Case sensitive identifiers specification for more information.

Accordingly, default aliases are now in lower case.
All aliases (default ones and those added manually) are automatically converted to lower case with a message like this one:

Option weechat.color.status_name_insecure has been added, the buffer name is now displayed with color lightmagenta by default if the connection with the server is NOT made with TLS.

Options, commands and documentation have been updated to "TLS" instead of "SSL":

Default value of option irc.server_default.tls is now on.
Connection to IRC servers is done with TLS and port 6697 by default.

For example to create libera.chat server, using TLS (if option irc.server_default.tls is on) and default port 6697:

To force non-TLS connection (with default port 6667):

By default multiple pasted lines are now inserted in input and not sent immediately.

To enable this feature, the default value of option weechat.look.paste_max_lines has been changed to 100 (it was 1).
If needed, you can reset the option to the new default value after upgrade:

The option weechat.look.paste_auto_add_newline has been removed.

The default triggers "cmd_pass", "cmd_pass_register" and "server_pass" have been updated to be compatible with multiline input.

You can restore these default triggers with the following command:

When the bar name already exists, the API function bar_new returns the pointer to the bar (instead of NULL) and sets the default value for all options with the values received.
If you don’t want to set default values in an existing bar, it is recommended to first check if the bar exists with the API function bar_search.

Some options of /input command have been moved to other commands (they can still be used with /input but marked as deprecated and completion has been removed):

The following default keys can be reset to use the new command:

The following functions now return arithmetic result of subtracting the last compared UTF-8 char in string2 from the last compared UTF-8 char in string1:

In addition, the case conversion has been extended, now in addition to range A-Z, all chars that have a lower case version are handled.
That means for example the case insensitive comparison of "é" and "É" is 0 (chars are considered equal).

Example with WeeChat 3.8:

With older releases:

The functions string_tolower and string_toupper now return newly allocated string instead of doing the change in place.
The returned string must then be freed after use.

The trigger regex now starts with a command, which is "s" (regex replace, default) or "y" (translate chars).

For compatibility, any regex starting with a delimiter different from a letter will still work.

If you defined some triggers with a regex starting with a letter (used as delimiter), then you must change them before upgrading WeeChat, otherwise they’ll be lost after upgrade (with an error when WeeChat tries to load them from configuration file).

For example this regex is now invalid:

And must be replaced by:

For more information on the regex format, see the trigger chapter in the WeeChat User’s guide.

The CMake option ENABLE_PYTHON2 and autotools option --enable-python2 have been removed, and WeeChat can not be compiled with Python 2.x any more.

The two callbacks "callback_change" and "callback_delete" in scripting API function config_new_option have been changed: an integer return value was expected by error, now any return value is ignored (like it has always been in the C API).

In all script languages (except PHP), the argument "object_id" sent to the callback of "upgrade_new" 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 testing it, for example in Python:

In all script languages (except PHP), the argument "remaining_calls" sent to the callback of "hook_timer" 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 testing it, for example in Python:

A new parameter delete_previous_word_whitespace has been added in /input command to delete previous word until backspace.
This is now bound by default to the key Ctrl+w (see issue #559).

A new key Alt+Backspace has been added to delete word, like Ctrl+w did in previous releases.

You can get the new behavior for Ctrl+w with this command:

And add the new key Alt+Backspace with this command:

The API function string_build_with_split_string has been renamed to string_rebuild_split_string and two new arguments have been added: _index_start and index_end.

To stay compatible, the existing calls to the function must be done with the new function name and these values:

The "hook_print" callback is now called even when an empty message is displayed (with or without prefix).

This was a bug, but is mentioned here just in case some scripts callbacks would be surprised to be called with such empty messages.

The command of "beep" trigger is now executed only if the buffer notify is NOT set to none (in addition to existing conditions).

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

Relay of type "weechat" now offers a compression with Zstandard, which allows better compression and is much faster than zlib for both compression and decompression.

The new compression type is zstd, and the default compression is now off instead of zlib: the compression must now be explicitly given in the handshake command.

The option compression in init command has been removed, it is now ignored and must be given in the handshake command (it was deprecated since WeeChat 2.9).

The option relay.network.compression_level has been renamed to relay.network.compression and is now a percentage between 0 and 100:

The existing triggers "cmd_pass" and "cmd_pass_register" have been updated to hide key and password in command /msg nickserv setpass <nick> <key> <password> and support the option -server <name>.

You can restore the default triggers with the following command:

New parameters have been added in function hdata_search, used for the evaluation of expression.

New parameters are the same as function string_eval_expression:

The following scripts are updated consequently to be compatible with all WeeChat versions:

Support of static array in hdata has been added. For pointers to arrays, a prefix *, must be added in parameter array_size of API function hdata_new_var.

New keys have been added to manipulate the hotlist:

You can add them with the following command:

Since the key Alt+h has been moved to Alt+h, Alt+c, you must manually remove the old key:

A bar item called "typing" has been added to status bar by default. It is used to display users that are currently typing a message on the current IRC channel or private buffer.

If you want to display typing notifications in the status bar, add ,[typing] in your option weechat.bar.status.items.

Hashtables entries are now ordered by creation date, the following functions are now returning entries sorted by insertion order:

All supported capabilities are now enabled by default if the server support them:

Two new options have been added and enabled by default to customize the behavior of capabilities "account-notify" and "extended-join":

The default value of option irc.server_default.capabilities is now * which means that all capabilities supported by both WeeChat and the server are enabled by default.

After upgrade, to enable all capabilities and remove custom capabilities you have set, you can do:

You can also explicitly disable some capabilities with this syntax (see /help irc.server_default.capabilities):

The SASL mechanisms DH-BLOWFISH and DH-AES have been removed, because they are insecure and already removed from most IRC servers.
If you were using one of these mechanisms, it is highly recommended to switch to any other supported SASL mechanism.

For example:

Support of XDG directories has been added.

For compatibility, if the XDG directories are not found but ~/.weechat exists, this single directory is used for all files.

If you want to switch to XDG directories, you must create and move manually all files in the appropriate directories.
See WeeChat XDG specification for more information.

Some options have new default value: %h is replaced by ${weechat_xxx_dir}.
If you didn’t change the value, it is recommended to set the new default value, by doing /unset <option> on each option:

The following scripts are updated to take care of XDG directories, be sure they are all up-to-date, otherwise files may be saved in wrong directories or the script may not find some files:

To check if XDG directories are used, you can run command /debug dirs, which should show different directories for config/data/cache/runtime, like this:

With the legacy ~/.weechat directory, the output would be:

A new option has been added to load system’s default trusted certificate authorities on startup: weechat.network.gnutls_ca_system (boolean, enabled by default).

The option weechat.network.gnutls_ca_file has been renamed to weechat.network.gnutls_ca_user and is now used for extra certificates (not the system ones).
This option now supports multiple files, separated by colons.

If you have set a user CA file in option weechat.network.gnutls_ca_file, then you must set this same value in the new option weechat.network.gnutls_ca_user.

When one of these options are changed, all certificates are purged and reloaded from files.

The split of commands is now performed before the evaluation of string, in the following cases:

If ever you used here multiple commands that are found by evaluation, then you must use multiple commands directly.

For example if you did this:

This will now execute a single command: /command1 with two parameters: secret1;/command2 and secret2, which is not what you expect.

So you must now do this instead:

You could also do this, but be careful, there are two evaluations of strings (the secured data itself is evaluated as well):

A new option sec.crypt.passphrase_command has been added to read the passphrase from the output of an external program (like a password manager).

The option sec.crypt.passphrase_file has been removed, because the command can now read a file as well. If you used a file to read the passphrase, you must now setup the command like this:

For security reasons, it is of course highly recommended to use a password manager or a program to decrypt a file with your passphrase rather than using a file with the clear password.
For example with password-store (command pass):

The vertical split of windows has been fixed (see issue #1612): now the new window has the asked size, instead of the original window.

For example with this command the new window (on the right) has size 80% instead of 20% in previous releases:

The command /buffer localvar has been renamed to /buffer listvar.

The option localvar is still supported to stay compatible with scripts calling it or referencing it in the documentation.
It is deprecated and will be removed in a future release.

New options setvar and delvar were also added in command /buffer, see /help buffer.

A new buflist option buflist.look.use_items has been added to speed up display of buflist, in case you use a single buflist item (the most common use case).

If ever you use more than one item (item "buflist2" or even "buflist3"), you must adjust the value of the new option, which defaults to 1:

A new option has been added to allow the script plugin to download the list of scripts and the scripts themselves (on weechat.org by default).

This option is off by default, so you must opt in if you want to use the /script command, even if you upgraded from an old WeeChat version:

The command and arguments given to commands /allchan, /allpv and /allserv are now evaluated (see /help on the commands for more information).

Additionally, a breaking change has been introduced: the leading / is now required in these commands, so this allows to send text to buffers without using the command /msg * xxx.

So with previous releases, to say "hello" on all channels:

Now it can be done like this:

If you want to use a command, you must add explicitly the leading /:

The command of "beep" trigger is now executed only if the message does NOT contain the tag "notify_none" (in addition to existing conditions).

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

A new option has been added in bar: "color_bg_inactive". It is used for window bars, when the window is not the active window.

By default this color is set to "default" for default bars, except for status and title: the color is set to "darkgray".

If you upgrade from a previous release, the color will be "default" for all bars, so if you want to use the new default settings, you can do:

If you changed the option "color_bg" in some bars, you should also adjust the new option "color_bg_inactive", depending on your needs.

The function bar_new in API is updated, so this is an incompatible change: all plugins and scripts calling this function must be updated.

The following scripts are updated consequently to be compatible with all WeeChat versions:

The modifier "weechat_print" has been fixed and the content of "modifier_data" sent to the callback has changed (see issue #42).

This is an incompatible change, therefore all plugins, scripts and triggers using this modifier and the "modifier_data" argument must be updated.

The old format contained plugin name + ";" + buffer name + ";" + tags:

The new format contains buffer pointer + ";" + tags:

The following scripts are updated consequently to be compatible with all WeeChat versions:

Completion functions have been added in WeeChat 2.9, to allow relay clients or plugins/scripts to complete a string, without using the buffer input.

Therefore two functions have been renamed in API and moved to the new "completion" category:

The build options ENABLE_GNUTLS (in CMake) and --disable-gnutls (in autotools) have been removed. That means now GnuTLS is always compiled and used in WeeChat.

Motivations:

The default trigger "cmd_pass" does not hide any more values of options in /set command which contain "password" in the name.

The reason is that it was masking values of options that contains the word "password" but the value is not a password and does not contain sensitive data, for example these options were affected:

Since all real password options are now evaluated, it is recommended to use secure data to store the passwords ciphered in config file.
By using secure data, the passwords are never displayed on screen (even with /set command) nor written in log files.

For example you can do that:

This will be displayed like that in WeeChat, using the new regex value of "cmd_pass" trigger:

If you want to use the new trigger regex after upgrade, you can do:

If ever you prefer the old trigger regex, you can change it like that:

The arguments for a trigger command (except the command itself) are now evaluated.

That means you can use for example new lines in the command description, like that:

The command /help test will display this help in WeeChat:

The command line option -a (or --no-connect), which can also be used in the /plugin command, is now used to set a new info called auto_connect (see the function info_get in the Plugin API reference).

Therefore, the option is not sent any more to the function weechat_plugin_init of plugins.
The plugins using this option must now get the info auto_connect and check if the value is "1" (a string with just 1).

The purpose of this change is to allow scripts as well to check this info on startup, and connect or not, depending on the value (see issue #1453).

To be compatible with WeeChat ≤ 2.7, the script can do this, for example in Python:

The variable auto_connect will be set like that, depending on the WeeChat version:

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 <name>.

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 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 the 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:

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 the 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.