Gitea: Proposal: Add KiwiIRC as a chat system, either as Gitea plugin or core feature.

[srmcgann]

Kiwi IRC (https://github.com/kiwiirc/kiwiirc) would like to explore the possibility of partnering and implementing Kiwi as a communications platform within Gitea, in the same manner as Mattermost on Github and Gitlab. Kiwi is a robust, open, highly customizable, web-based IRC client that can enable Gitea users to communicate easily on projects, with the potential to integrate tightly with Gitea hooks for in-channel notifications (builds, pushes, etc).
Kiwi is actively developed by a staff of 7 developers, and other open source contributors. If this proposal is accepted, we could begin working on one or more PR's to integrate Kiwi into Gitea. Looking forward to working together!

[lafriks]

You are more than welcome submit PR's for webhook support but I'm not sure if there is anything more to be integrated. If anything more than webhooks can you please describe more on what kind of integration

[srmcgann]

Hi @lafriks, our hope is that Gitea can benefit by including a system for users to chat with each other, share code and files/images, similar to how slack works, but with tight integration with Gitea. This kind of thing has been implemented in Github and Gitlab (using the Mattermost chat platform). Kiwi is FOSS and has been around for a long time, making it perfect for such a thing. Ideally Kiwi would be added to the Gitea core as an optional module or plugin that can be enabled by whomever installs Gitea. Kiwi would run on the same hardware as Gitea, and enable users to collaborate and get in-channel notices whenever something is pushed, merged, updated, etc. The channel(s) would be accessed via a link to the same server that Gitea runs on.

[adelowo]

Kiwi is FOSS and has been around for a long time, making it perfect for such a thing. Ideally Kiwi would be added to the Gitea core as an optional module or plugin that can be enabled by whomever installs Gitea. Kiwi would run on the same hardware as Gitea, and enable users to collaborate and get in-channel notices whenever something is pushed, merged, updated, etc.

I believe this is already possible with webhooks.

[srmcgann]

Basically, we (Kiwi) would be getting exposure and an opportunity to perform, and Gitea would be getting a valuable new feature. For example, Gitlab comes packaged with Mattermost at its core, as a communications platform which can be optionally enabled via config. As an embedded solution, it is streamlined for ease of installation (pretty much zero effort required), and comes ready with a suite of webhooks already configured out of the box. Of course Kiwi could be rigged up as an external plugin, but such would surely require extra work on the part of the user. Perhaps a demo of Kiwi would help shed some light: https://kiwiirc.com/nextclient/irc.freenode.net/#gitea-test

[lafriks]

But if I understand kiwi is just client and still needs irc server, right?

[kolaente]

What more would you need which could not be done via webhooks? Maybe incoming webhooks, but IMHO that'd be another pr, nothing special with kiwi integration.

[ShalokShalom]

I would be very interested in this, once Kiwi has added history support.

Also, it should be clearly distinguished between pure client support or still relying on a host like kiwiirc.com, especially considering how tight the cooperation between Kiwi and Gitea can be in which case.

Mattermost now gets support for Gitea, so tight integration and history support by Kiwi seems beneficial for its integration.

[lunny]

@ShalokShalom If I'm not wrong, that's issue was only be closed since there is a vote for that but not it's resolved.

[ShalokShalom]

The Mattermost dev describes this implementation as trivial and important.

[Dark-Feather]

I have a KiwiIRC instance alongside my Gitea install -- I put a link to the KiwiIRC vHost into custom/templates/custom/extra_links.tmpl and I have an InspIRCd/Anope stack that KiwiIRC ties to.

It would be nice if #1089 would allow us to use irker or something similar as a webhook target for notifications.

[Dark-Feather]

I have successfully been able to get https://github.com/jesopo/bitbot to work to take Gitea POST JSON hooks and publish them to channel. Combining that with https://github.com/prawnsalad/KiwiIRC.git, https://github.com/inspircd/inspircd, and https://github.com/anope/anope and I have a self-contained chatops stack implemented.