NOTE: microdc is no longer in development. See the News section for more information.
microdc is a command-line based Direct Connect client that uses the GNU Readline library for user interaction. It was developed from ground up and does not depend on any other program. Despite the command-line user interface, microdc was designed to be user friendly and simple to use.
microdc is currently in late beta state - there may be many bugs not yet discovered. It also lacks some features that other clients support, such as file hashing, multiple hub connections, and hub list support.
microdc is free software - it is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). It is written in C by Oskar Liljeblad, and is designed to compile and run on modern POSIX compatible systems such as Linux.
The features of microdc include:
There are many features that I would like to implement. See the TODO document in the source code tarball for details. If you would like to develop or contribute to microdc, you are more than welcome. Please contact me - see the Feedback section below for contact information.
2006-10-29: microdc is no longer in development.
The complete history of microdc can be seen here.
The latest version of microdc is 0.11.2, which was released on 0000-00-00:
Precompiled binaries are available for certain systems:
These files, as well as older versions, are available in the microdc file area.
The mailing list microdc-devel is open for any discussion about microdc, ranging from questions on how to use microdc to development inquiries. Archive and subscription information can be found on the list information page:
Please subscribe before you post to this list. Non-subscriber postings need to be approved by the moderator.
microdc is mentioned on the following pages:
microdc is copyright (C) 2004, 2005 Oskar Liljeblad
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
The source code of this project may contain files from other projects, and files generated by other projects, including:
Such files are licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License or a license compatible with the GNU GPL (as listed on http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html). See each file for copyright details.
The translations in the po directory may contain translations from other projects, including:
See the specific message file (PO file) for copyright of those messages.
The following programs are required to build microdc:
GNU C Compiler (gcc), version 3.0 or later
microdc makes use of some gcc 3.x features such as declarations in the middle of a block and always inlined functions. The GNU C Compiler is part of the GNU Compiler Collection which can be downloaded from http://gcc.gnu.org/. In Debian and many other distributions the package is called gcc.
make, a modern implementation
The make program is required to build microdc. microdc uses Makefiles generated by GNU Automake. The recommended make is GNU Make which can be downloaded from http://www.gnu.org/software/make/. In Debian and many other distributions the package is called make.
The following libraries are required to run microdc:
GNU Readline Library, version 4.0 or later
microdc uses Readline for user input. GNU Readline can be downloaded from http://cnswww.cns.cwru.edu/php/chet/readline/rltop.html. Libraries such as libedit and libeditline do not support the necessary completion features of GNU Readline, and can as such not be used with microdc. In Debian woody the required package is libreadline4 (libreadline4-dev during build). In testing and later, the recommended package is libreadline5 (and libreadline5-dev when building).
To build the microdc executable, simply run
./configure make
If you want to install microdc on your system, run make install. This will copy the executable, manual page and locale files to the appropriate directories.
For more information regarding configure and make, see the INSTALL document.
microdc is usually started like this:
microdc
(Some command line options are available - run microdc --help to get a list.) Once started, a prompt is displayed and microdc is ready for your command. You can get a list of commands by pressing tab on the empty prompt or by issuing the help command. The help command can also be used to get information on a specific command:
help exit
The first thing you would do is setting share and download directory:
set sharedir /path/to/files/i/want/to/share set downloaddir /path/where/i/want/downloaded/files/saved
If you are not behind a firewall that prevents you from receiving connections from the outside world, you can use the set active command to enable active mode. Set the desired port to listen on client connections on using listenport, then enable active mode:
set listenport 10101 set active 1
If you omit the set listenport command, a random free port will be picked for you. There are many commands to change your settings, some of them are:
set nick my_neat_nickname set description "I have nothing to share" set email i.m.living@off.the.example.net set speed 56Kbps
Next you must connect to a hub. Use the connect command to do this:
connect my.favorite.hub.example.com:43912
The port part (":43912") is optional.
Once connected, you can chat a little:
say "Hello all, I'm using this new DC client called microdc!" msg some_operator "Please don't ban me, microdc is still in development!"
Note that the double quotes aren't strictly necessary in this case, but if you don't use them all consecutive whitespace will be translated to a single space (e.g. "foo bar" becomes "foo bar"). Semicolon (;) and number sign (#) will also have special meanings, just like in the shell. Semicolon is used to separate multiple commands on one line, and number sign as the first character of a word will introduce comments.
You can get a list of users online:
who
Or you can browse other people's files:
browse some_user
The first time you issue the browse command, the user's file list will be downloaded and saved to the listing directory, which is usually /tmp/microdc.PID. This can be changed with the set listingdir command. The listing files will be removed when you exit microdc. Note that the prompt will change when the file list has been downloaded and processed. The following commands are available when browsing:
cd some/dir pwd ls some/dir/or/file ls -l some/dir/or/file get some/dir/or/file
The cd command changes directory, pwd prints the current directory, ls lists files and get downloads or queues files for download. (Tab completion is supported for remote file listings when browsing, so I recommend using that.) Once finished browsing the user, enter browse with no arguments to stop browsing that user:
browse
Downloads will start as soon as you enter the get command. A list of user connections can be retrieved using the transfers command:
transfers
This command will list all connections along with their names and current status. You can disconnect a connection using the cancel command:
cancel my_friend|UL
Use the search command to search for files:
search favorite open source program
The names of the files returned will contain all of the words specified with the search command. At the moment it is not possible to specify file type, or minimum or maximum size. The review the results of a search operation, use the results command:
results 1
If you omit the search index to the results command, it will list all issued searches.
Once finished playing around with microdc, quit with exit:
exit
If you want to execute some commands on start up (such as setting your nickname or active setting), you can place them in .microdc/config in your home directory. This directory also holds the history file (.microdc/history).
One last thing: If your find that microdc is being banned from hubs, try change the client tag with the tag command, e.g.:
set tag ++ V:0.401
Note that this list of references is not complete.
Protocol references:
Web site and file area for microdc is hosted on Savannah:
The latest version of microdc should always be available on this site.
Please send bug reports, suggestions, ideas or comments in general to the mailing list:
The author of microdc and this document, Oskar Liljeblad, can be contacted by e-mail on the following address:
If you would like to get involved with this project, please don't hesitate to write to the mailing list or the author (me)! All contributions are welcomed.
There is no support for multiple share directories at this time, but microdc will follow symbolic links when scanning for files to share. This way you can share files on multiple drives and have full control of the share directory layout.
You might get this error when connected and logging in to a hub:
Cannot send to hub - Connection reset by peer
This means that the hub has disconnected you, and that microdc did not yet receive the reason. This happens on some hubs with bots that can disconnect you.
When there are more than a screen-full of completion matches, readline will display a question "Display all N possibilities? (y or n)". No hub input can be processed until this question is answered due to the internal design of microdc.
Weird things may happen to the prompt when resizing the window. I am currently investigating this problem.