How to set up Matrix with purple-matrix

It is possible to communicate with matrix on bitlbee via libpurple and purple-matrix

Building and Installing

Ubuntu packages

Pre-built binaries are available for Ubuntu since version 17.04 (Zesty Zapus). You should be able to install them giving the following commands in a terminal window: 

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install purple-matrix

ArchLinux package

There package purple-matrix-git is available for Archlinux in AUR. The package works with bitlbee-libpurple-git and perhaps bitlbee-libpurple too.

Building from source

Building the plugin from source you will need development headers/libraries for the following:

You should then be able to: 

$ git clone https://github.com/matrix-org/purple-matrix.git
$ cd purple-matrix
$ make
$ sudo make install

Usage

Add the account with: 

> account add matrix @<username>:<homeserver> <password>
> account matrix on

Example: 

> account add matrix @username:matrix.org password
> account matrix on

Known Issues

Spam in &bitlbee

matrix - Connected messages being spammed in &bitlbee, does not seem to affect functionality. See Github issue #31

It's possible to hide the messages in most irc clients.

Irssi: 

/ignore -regexp -pattern matrix.*Connected &bitlbee

Weechat: 

/filter add matrix_conn_msg *&bitlbee * matrix.*Connected

rcirc: 

(defun my-rcirc-filter-bitlbee-matrix (orig-fun process sender response target text &optional activity)
  (unless
      (and target sender text
           (string= "&bitlbee" target)
           (string= sender "root")
           (string= text "matrix - Connected"))
    (apply orig-fun process sender response target text activity nil)))

(advice-add 'rcirc-print :around #'my-rcirc-filter-bitlbee-matrix)

Human friendly chatroom names

chat names in matrix-purple are identified by ID in bitlbee and not with human friendly names, see GitHub issue #55