About BitlBee
BitlBee brings IM (instant messaging) to IRC clients. It's a great solution for people who have an IRC client running all the time and don't want to run an additional MSN/AIM/whatever client.
BitlBee currently supports the following IM networks/protocols: XMPP/Jabber (including Google Talk), MSN Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, AIM and ICQ.
How to use it?
Just install the program and connect to the BitlBee server with your favourite IRC-client. You will be force-joined into the control channel where root (the bot, your assistant, the bee) will try to help you to get the program working.
As soon as you get your accounts working, you can add users to your contact list and talk to them, just like you normally do on IRC. Open a query, talk to the person in the channel, or even talk to them in groupchats that will look to you like just another IRC channel.
If you don't want to (or can't) install BitlBee on your own machine you can also use one of the public servers. If you use Windows, this is the preferred option, as the Win32 port isn't very reliable yet.
ui-fix merged into mainline.
All the stuff described in the earlier article about ui-fix (see also the wiki page) is now available in mainline, and running on testing.bitlbee.org. Expect a 1.3 development release soon, while the last remaining features/fixes for the next major release are done!
BitlBee 1.2.8
BitlBee 1.2.8 is ready! Most likely this release is the last one in the 1.2.x series. A lot of work has happened in other branches (killerbee, ui-fix, etc.) recently, in preparation for the next major release. Since that code diverted so much from the current stable release branch, it's about time to focus on that.
For now, enjoy extra bits of Twitter functionality, and some more bugfixes and minor feature enhancements. If you want more new stuff, feel free to try out the ui-fix branch now already (also running on testing.bitlbee.org) or wait for a development snapshot that will hopefully come out in the near future.
The IRC core rewrite, almost done.
Over the last month I've rewritten most of the IRC core of BitlBee. This was on the roadmap for a long time, but more a long term plan. Many feature requests (the most important ones being separate control channels per account or per contact group) were postponed "until the IRC core rewrite is done", etc. Now, this work is finally done (or at least nearing completion).
The branch can be found at http://code.bitlbee.org/wilmer/ui-fix/. Debian packages are also available, as usual. The branch is based on the killerbee branch, so it also has the file transfer/libpurple functionality.
Read more on the BitlBee Wiki.
Update (2010-06-08 21:31 (UTC)): testing.bitlbee.org is now running this code on port 6669. Feel free to give it a try!
File transfers and libpurple support
Today I merged libpurple support into the killerbee branch. The killerbee branch is the slightly more bleeding edge branch of BitlBee. It has things that are fairly usable but need a little bit more polishing before making it into a release. See the branch at http://code.bitlbee.org/killerbee/, browse it via Loggerhead or download it using Bazaar.
Debian packages are available, as always, via http://code.bitlbee.org/debian/. Install the plain bitlbee package if you want the regular code with file transfer support for currently just Jabber and the bitlbee-libpurple branch to use any libpurple protocol module you want.
For those who don't know, libpurple is the library used by Pidgin (and Adium, Finch, etc.), allowing BitlBee to connect to several instant messaging networks not currently supported by BitlBee (like Gadu Gadu and QQ), and adding features to current protocols that are currently not supported (like MSN status messages and file transfer support for most protocols).
Note that libpurple is much heavier on resource usage, and may also be less stable. The native BitlBee IM protocol modules will always continue to exist.
Bug reports for this code are welcome on our bug tracker, and if you have problems getting this to work, feel free to come to #bitlbee on irc.oftc.net.
BitlBee Wiki
Several years ago already, we ran a poll on if BitlBee should have a Wiki or not. Over the last few months, it appeared that many people think there's not enough clear documentation on-line on how to do stuff with BitlBee. Although BitlBee has fairly comprehensive help built-in, it's more a reference than anything else. Docs are available on-line but mostly in the form of some fragmented HOWTOs and blog posts, often with information that has become obsolete.
Having one BitlBee Wiki will hopefully fix that problem. I seeded the Wiki with two common FAQs, but there are more. Please, anyone with some time, please add stuff to it. It's open for anyone to edit as long as you can solve the (hopefully) simple textchas.
BitlBee 1.2.7
BitlBee 1.2.7 was just released with the fix for the MSN Messenger login issues.
It includes some other changes (mostly IM module fixes and a show_offline setting that lets you have your offline contacts in the control channel as well.