Rel4tion-Wiki/maint/admin/irc-bot.mdwn

There is an IRC commit bot (the software is KGB), which reports commits made
into Git repositories (currently the [[!rel4git wiki]] repo, i.e. this website)
to IRC channels (currently `#rel4tion`). The bot's nickname is `rel4bot`.

# Intro

KGB has a server component which listens to requests and sends messages to IRC
channels accordingly. There is also a client command, meant to be run from a
Git hook, which contacts the server to send requests.

I'd prefer to try doing this in Haskell, because it's a chance to learn more in
Haskell and customize the bot, but after examining my options I decided to
leave this for later (I have enough open projects). KGB comes as a package in
Debian-based distros, so it's quick and easy to set up.

I'll hopefully do some hacking with Haskell IRC-related packages in the future.

# Server

The KGB server daemon has a config file under `/etc/`. New IRC channels need to
be added to it (or to other config files it `include`s). For example, this is
for `#rel4tion`:

[[!format yaml """
repositories:
  wiki:
    password: verysecret
channels:
  - name: '#rel4tion'
    network: freenode
    repos:
      - wiki
"""]]

# Client

In the gitolite conf file, specify `notify-irc` as a post-receive hook. For
example:

    repo    wiki
            RW+    =    fr33domlover
            RW     =    ikiwiki
            R      =    daemon
            config gitweb.description = "Research, design, development, documents"
            option hook.post-receive  = ping-ikiwiki notify-irc

The hook script looks like this (the GNOME sysadmin team wiki pages helped):

[[!format sh """
#!/bin/sh

# send notification to IRC channel

REPOSITORY_ID=$(basename "$PWD")
REPOSITORY_ID=${REPOSITORY_ID%.git}

kgb-client --conf /var/lib/gitolite3/kgb-client-${REPOSITORY_ID}.conf --repository git > /dev/null 2>&1
"""]]

Create a client config file and place it under the gitolite user's home
directory. The name should as specified in the script above. For example,
`kgb-config-wiki.conf` looks like this:

[[!format yaml """
---
repo-id: wiki
servers:
 - uri: http://localhost:5391/
   timeout: 5
   password: verysecret
   status-dir: /var/cache/kgb/client-status
   web-link: http://git.rel4tion.org/?p=${module}.git;a=commitdiff;h=${commit}
"""]]