Add support for Signal

[Evermoonfandom]

If possible that would be great, more the more cli the better :))

[d99kris]

Hello - so this request has come up several times since nchat first release, but I've been reluctant before due to certain circumstances, but as those circumstances have changed I've decided to take a stab at this.

In 5b353ba / v5.13.12 basic support for Signal has been added for public beta-testing (disabled by default). Build steps below.

I've set up a nchat users signal group for discussions on Signal. For general nchat usage I still recommend the Telegram group though.

Feel free to feedback in this discussion thread or report new bugs for problems encountered.

Basic functionality as outlined in Testing Checklist for Signal is expected to work. But as I'm not a heavy Signal user myself, there are likely many (special) cases I have not encountered in my brief testing.

P.S. I'll be away the next two weeks, so it's unlikely I'll get a chance to fix any bugs reported during that period.

Build steps

For the underlying cryptography libsignal is used, and one can choose to build it (recommended) or download it from a third-party.

Building nchat with signal using locally built libsignal

Pre-requisites / extra dependencies
Ubuntu:

sudo apt install rustc cargo protobuf-compiler

macOS:

brew install rust protobuf

Arch (not tested):

sudo pacman -S rust protobuf

Enabling Signal build

NCHAT_CMAKEARGS="-DHAS_SIGNAL=ON" ./make.sh build

Optionally install:

./make.sh install

Building nchat with downloaded pre-built libsignal

Enabling Signal build

NCHAT_CMAKEARGS="-DHAS_SIGNAL=ON -DBUILD_LIBSIGNAL=OFF" ./make.sh build

Optionally install:

./make.sh install

Plan

Assuming the implementation provides acceptable functionality, the plan is to eventually enable it by default (and have make.sh helper-script install required dependencies).