Supybot
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Overview
Supybot is an IRC Bot written in Python; its goals are primarily clarity, utility, and flexibility.
Clarity refers both to the code with which the bot is implemented and the ease with which the users can discover how to use the bot. One of the primary reasons Supybot was written was to give Python programmers a better option for writing IRC bots — the framework since developed makes writing new plugins simple and easy.
Utility refers to the bot's ability to serve a useful purpose. Including several useful plugins by default (and always gladly accepting more :)), chances are, Supybot does what you want. If it doesn't yet, chances are it will, if someone's interested in writing the plugin.
Flexibility refers both to the ability of the user to customize the way the bot behaves and the ability of the programmer to achieve his goals when writing plugins for Supybot. We've written a complete, highly flexible capability system, allowing those who run bots to specify with the granularity of a single command exactly how their users should be able to interact with the bot. For programmers, we offer entry points at every level of the framework for the utmost in flexibility with respect to the IRC protocol. At the highest level, they can simply reply to messages, but at the lowest level they can access the actual socket to the IRC server.
Support
The official channel for Supybot support is #supybot on the Freenode network, irc.freenode.net. The original supybot also does relaying between this channel and #supybot on OFTC (irc.oftc.net).
Brief History
Development on Supybot began on 2002, mostly consisting of designing the underlying IRC library and focusing less on writing the bot code itself. Development ramped up sharply in 2003 and Supybot quickly took shape as not only an excellent IRC bot in its own right, but also an excellent platform upon which to build IRC-based applications, as particular care was taken to create a very high-quality IRC library upon which to build supybot which wasn't tied to writing IRC bots. After a flurry of changes and refactorings in mid- to late-2003, Supybot has stabilized relatively well and become very usable for any user interested in running an IRC bot. It now has some very powerful and useful features such as:
- Easy-to-use configuration system.
- High-quality plugin architecture that is easy for plugin developers to use.
- Human-readable and self-documenting configuation file.
- Pluggable network driver architecture allowing any network framework to be used with the bot (e.g. Twisted Python (http://www.twistedmatrix.com) and the plain socket driver).
- Multiple server connections with optional relaying between them.
External Links
- Supybot homepage (http://supybot.com/)
- Supybot Sourceforge project page (http://www.sf.net/projects/supybot)
- Supybot forums (http://supybot.com/forums)