ABOUT

http://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot

Inspired by the original MeetBot, by Holger Levsen, which was itself a
derivative of Mootbot (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ScribesTeam/MootBot),
by the Ubuntu Scribes team.

The Supybot file GETTING_STARTED
(/usr/share/doc/supybot/GETTING_STARTED.gz on Debian systems) provides
hinformation on configuring supybot the first time, including taking
ownership the first time.  You really need to read this if you haven't
used supybot before.



INSTALLATION

• pygments (optional) (debian package python-pygments) (for pretty IRC logs). This package is no longer required (after HTMLlog2 became default)

• You need to install supybot yourself. You can use supybot-wizard to make a bot configuration.

  • See the file GETTING_STARTED (/usr/share/doc/supybot/GETTING_STARTED.gz on a Debian system). This tells all about supybot installation, and is an important prerequisite to understanding MeetBot configuration.

  • Don't use a prefix character. (disable this: supybot.reply.whenAddressedBy.chars: in the config file - leave it blank afterwards.) If you do use a prefix character, it should be different than the "#" MeetBot prefix character. There are issues here which still need to be worked out.

• Move the MeetBot directory into your plugins directory of Supybot.

• You need the ircmeeting directory to be importable as a python module.

  • Easy method: Copy ircmeeting into the MeetBot directory. This makes ircmeeting work as a relative import. However, this will probably stop working with some future Python version.

  • Other method: Copy ircmeeting somewhere into $PYTHONPATH.

• Make sure the plugin is loaded. Use the command load MeetBot. You can check the command config plugins to check what is loaded.

• Make supybot join any channels you are interested in. The wizard handles this the first time around. After that, I guess you have to learn about supybot. If the plugin is loaded, it is active on ALL channels the bot is on. You can also command the bot after it's online.

• Make a meetingLocalConfig.py file and put it somewhere that it can be found:

  • in $PYTHONPATH
  • in the ircmeeting/ directory
  • in the current working directory

• Configuration of meetingLocalConfig.py is covered in the manual, doc/Manual.txt

Supybot does a lot, far more than this one readme can talk about. You need to learn about supybot a bit, too, in order to be able to use MeetBot properly.

DESIGN DECISIONS

The MeetBot plugin doesn't operate like a regular supybot plugin.  It
bypasses the normal command system.  Instead it listens for all lines
(it has to log them all anyway) and if it sees a command, it acts on it.

- Separation of meeting code and plugin code.  This should make it
  easy to port to other bots, and perhaps more importantly make it
  easier to maintain, or rearrange, the structure within supybot.

- Not making users have to register and have capabilities added.  The
  original meetbot ran as a service to many channels not necessarily
  connected to the original owner.

- Makes it easier to replay stored logs.  I don't have to duplicate the
  supybot command parsing logic, such as detecting the bot nick and
  running the proper command.  Also, there might be command overlaps
  with some preexisting plugins.



LICENSE
~~~~~~~
The MeetBot plugin is under the same license as supybot is, a 3-clause
BSD.  The license is documented in each code file (and also applies to
this README file).