Installation

This are the instructions to install SàT using Python. Note that if you are using GNU/Linux, Salut à Toi may already be present on your distribution.

Salut à Toi is made of one backend, and several frontends. To use it, the first thing to do is to install the backend.

We recommand to use development version for now, until the release of 0.8.

Development version

Note for Arch users: a pkgbuild is available for your distribution on AUR, check sat-xmpp-hg (as well as other sat-* packages).

You can install the latest development version using pip. You need to have the following dependencies installed first:

  • Python 3 with development headers
  • Python 3 “venv”, which may already be installed with Python 3
  • Mercurial
  • libcairo 2 with development header
  • libjpeg with development headers
  • libgirepository 1.0 with development headers
  • libdbus-1 with development headers
  • libdbus-glib-1 with development headers
  • libxml2 with development headers
  • libxlt2 with development headers
  • D-Bus x11 tools (this doesn’t needs X11, it is just needed for dbus-launch)
  • cmake

On Debian and derivatives, you can get all this with following command:

$ sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-venv python3-wheel mercurial libxml2-dev libxslt-dev libcairo2-dev libjpeg-dev libgirepository1.0-dev libdbus-1-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev dbus-x11 cmake

Now go in a location where you can install Salut à Toi, for instance your home directory:

$ cd

And enter the following commands (here we install SàT with SVG support, which is needed to display SVG avatars on some frontends):

$ python3 -m venv sat
$ source sat/bin/activate
$ pip install wheel
$ pip install hg+https://repos.goffi.org/sat_tmp hg+https://repos.goffi.org/sat_templates "hg+https://repos.goffi.org/sat#egg=sat[SVG]"

Don’t worry if you see the following message, SàT should work anyway:

Failed building wheel for pygobject

After installing SàT, you need to install the media:

$ cd
$ hg clone https://repos.goffi.org/sat_media

then, create the directory ~/.config/sat:

$ mkdir -p ~/.config/sat

and the file ~/.config/sat/sat.conf containing:

[DEFAULT]
media_dir = ~/sat_media

Of course, replace ~/sat_media with the actual path you have used.

You can check Configuration for details

Usage

To launch the sat backend, enter:

$ sat

…or, if you want to launch it in foreground:

$ sat fg

You can stop it with:

$ sat stop

To know if backend is launched or not:

$ sat status

NOTE: since SàT v0.5.0, the backend is automatically launched when a frontend needs it.

You can check that SàT is installed correctly by trying jp (the backend need to be launched first, check below):

$ jp --version
jp 0.8.0D « La Cecília » (rev df26f1a9020a [M] (default 2020-04-14 21:01 +0200) +231) Copyright (C) 2009-2020 Jérôme Poisson, Adrien Cossa
This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY;
This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions.

If you have a similar output, SàT is working.

Note

if you have the message /!\ D-Bus is not launched, please see README to see instructions on how to launch it that mean that the D-Bus service is not launched, this usually happens when launching SàT on a server, without graphic interface like X.org or Wayland (in which case D-Bus service should be launcher automatically).

As the message states, instructions on how to launch the service are given in the README file of Salut à Toi.

Frontends

So far, the following frontends exist and are actively maintained:

Cagou
desktop/mobile (Android) frontend
Libervia
the web frontend
Primitivus
Text User Interface
jp
Command Line Interface

To launch Primitivus, just type:

$ primitivus

then create a profile (XMPP account must already exist).

To use jp, follow its help:

$ jp --help

There are some other frontends:

Bellaciao
based on Qt, a rich desktop frontend (currently on hold)
Wix
former desktop frontend based on WxWidgets (deprecated with version 0.6.0)
Sententia
Emacs frontend developed by a third party (development is currently stalled)