Livewire: A native XMPP client for Ubuntu Touch

projectmoon

Live discussion at: xmpp:livewire@conference.agnos.is?join

For the past ~2 months, I have been hacking away at making a native XMPP client for Ubuntu Touch. When @brenno.almeida released Greenline, the opportunity was too good to pass up. There exists an XMPP client called Libervia (formerly known as Salut a Toi) that works as a background daemon, and thus could fit pretty much straight into the existing architecture of Greenline.

Many experiments later, ~~we now have Greenline but yellow~~ the internals have been completely redone in an unholy abomination of Rust (of course) and Python (because Libervia is written in Python). It's a fully confined app that supports most modern XMPP basics, with a few features that still need to be implemented (e.g. reactions).

The client is considered to be in alpha state, but is available on the OpenStore for testing. I consider it functional enough for daily use, but with rough edges. This thread is a discussion/support thread for the app. More specific bug reports should be filed at the git repository: https://git.agnos.is/projectmoon/livewire

You can find it on the OpenStore. I expect a handful of updates in the next days/weeks to address the most glaring bugs, and then to work on proper push notification support, which will be its own interesting journey.

Linus67

@projectmoon
Greenline has ~ 30 MB
Kaidan has 9 MB (XMPP Client in the OpenStore) Kaidan works great,

Livewire has ~200 MB Why is Livewire such a heavyweight?

projectmoon

@Linus67 said:

@projectmoon
Greenline has ~ 30 MB
Kaidan has 9 MB (XMPP Client in the OpenStore) Kaidan works great,

Livewire has ~200 MB Why is Livewire such a heavyweight?

Gotta shove all that Python somewhere. Could possibly be trimmed down. Maybe there are some unnecessary modules.

Libervia was chosen because there is no complete XMPP solution in Rust yet. If there ever is one, I would probably switch to that to reduce the complexity. Possibly will also investigate using the QT XMPP library.

Edit: Indeed 215 MB of the installation size is Python code.

Linus67

@projectmoon Okay, all right. I installed the app, and it looks promising. This could turn out to be something really big. Especially with olmea encryption in all conversations.

projectmoon

@Linus67 come join the (currently one man) party in livewire@conference.agnos.is to test things out!

sixwheeledbeast

Thank you I have been hopeful a working UT OMEMO XMPP chat client would come soon.
This is very heavy but functions which is great.
I have a few questions.
How far away are features like:- OMEMO MUC, In band registration, support multiple accounts, audio/video calls?
If Libervia is a backend is there a possibly it could be merged into the existing messages app?

projectmoon

@sixwheeledbeast said:
OMEMO MUC

Next major item on the list. All the pieces are present, just need to assemble them correctly.

In band registration

I consider it lower priority: something for app stable release, but not for alpha -> beta graduation. Although it's a barrier to new users, it's possible to register elsewhere. However, if someone wants to contribute it earlier, hey ho let's go.

support multiple accounts

Coming soon to a .click near you

audio/video calls?

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away.

If Libervia is a backend is there a possibly it could be merged into the existing messages app?

Anything is possible. But I won't be doing it. I don't know how the Lomiri messaging app is constructed, exactly, and if it's specific to SMS/MMS or not.