cove

Cove is a TUI client for euphoria.io, a threaded real-time chat platform.

It runs on Linux, Windows and macOS.

Using cove

To start cove, simply run cove in your terminal. For more info about the available subcommands such as exporting room logs or resetting cookies, run cove --help.

If you delete rooms, cove's vault (the database it stores messages and other things in) won't automatically shrink. If it takes up too much space, try running cove gc and waiting for it to finish. This isn't done automatically because it can take quite a while.

Installation

At this point, cove is not available via any package manager.

Cove is available as a Nix Flake. To try it out, you can use

$ nix run --override-input nixpkgs nixpkgs github:Garmelon/cove/latest

Manual installation

This section contains instructions on how to install cove by compiling it yourself. It doesn't assume you know how to program, but it does assume basic familiarity with the command line on your platform of choice. Cove runs in the terminal, after all.

Installing rustup

Cove is written in Rust, so the first step is to install rustup. Either install it from your package manager of choice (if you have one) or use the installer.

Test your installation by running rustup --version and cargo --version. If rustup is installed correctly, both of these should show a version number.

Cove is designed on the current version of the stable toolchain. If cove doesn't compile, you can try switching to the stable toolchain and updating it using the following commands:

$ rustup default stable
$ rustup update

Installing cove

To install or update to the latest release of cove, run the following command:

$ cargo install --force --git https://github.com/Garmelon/cove --branch latest

If you like to live dangerously and want to install or update to the latest, bleeding-edge, possibly-broken commit from the repo's main branch, run the following command.

Warning: This could corrupt your vault. Make sure to make a backup before running the command.

$ cargo install --force --git https://github.com/Garmelon/cove

To install a specific version of cove, run the following command and substitute in the full version you want to install:

$ cargo install --force --git https://github.com/Garmelon/cove --tag v0.1.0

Config file

Cove's config file uses the TOML format.

When launched, cove prints the location it is loading its config file from. To configure cove, create a config file at that location. This location can be changed via the --config command line option.

The following is a complete list of available options. If a command line option with the same purpose exists, it takes precedence over the option specified in the config file.

data_dir

Type: String (representing path)
Default: Platform dependent

The directory that cove stores its data in when not running in ephemeral mode.

Relative paths are interpreted relative to the user's home directory.

See also the --data-dir command line option.

ephemeral

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Whether to start in ephemeral mode.

In ephemeral mode, cove doesn't store any data. It completely ignores any options related to the data dir.

See also the --ephemeral command line option.

offline

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Whether to start in offline mode.

In offline mode, cove won't automatically join rooms marked via the autojoin option on startup. You can still join those rooms manually by pressing a in the rooms list.

See also the --offline command line option.

rooms_sort_order

Type: String, one of alphabetic, importance
Default: alphabetic

Initial sort order of rooms list.

alphabetic sorts rooms in alphabetic order.

importance sorts rooms by the following criteria (in descending order of priority):

1. connected rooms before unconnected rooms
2. rooms with unread messages before rooms without
3. alphabetic order

euph.rooms.<room>.autojoin

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Whether to automatically join this room on startup.

euph.rooms.<room>.username

Type: String
Default: Not set

If set, cove will set this username upon joining if there is no username associated with the current session.

euph.rooms.<room>.force_username

Type: Boolean
Default: false

If euph.rooms.<room>.username is set, this will force cove to set the username even if there is already a different username associated with the current session.

euph.rooms.<room>.password

Type: String
Default: Not set

If set, cove will try once to use this password to authenticate, should the room be password-protected.