Adam Glasgall's beta Zulip support for Barnowl is great, but requires compiling Barnowl from source. This isn't the easiest thing in the world, especially if you're on OS X.

Maybe you just want to get a command-line interface to Zulip! That's where this Vagrant setup comes in.

Credit for this most properly goes to Adam and the Zulip team — I (ternus) just wrapped and packaged it.

1. Download and install Vagrant.
2. If necessary, download and install a provider such as Virtualbox.
3. Check out this repository, and in your checkout's directory, run vagrant up.
4. Follow the prompts. Make sure to have your Zulip username, realm, and API key on hand.
5. Once the Vagrant VM has started, run vagrant ssh and, inside the machine, ./zulip-barnowl.

That's it!

When you start barnowl, you'll see a curses-style interface split into two: an upper window, which shows your incoming/outgoing messages, and a lower window (the editwin) which you use to compose messages.

You can scroll through messages with the up/down keys or n/p.

To start writing a message, type c (aliased in the provided configuration to :zulip:write). You'll need to either provide the username (~email address) of the person you're writing to, or provide the stream/topic pair with "command-line" arguments, like so:

• :zulip:write [email protected] — Write a private message to Bob
• :zulip:write [email protected] [email protected] — Write a private group message to Bob and Alice
• :zulip:write -c general — Write a stream message to stream:general
• :zulip:write -c general -i foo — Write a stream message to stream:general topic:foo

Typing r while the cursor (->) is on a message will start a reply to that message (the :zulip:write line will autofill with the right parameters, and you'll be in the editwin immediately).

Enter your message in the edit window. Press Ctrl-d to send, or end with a . on a line by itself. Ctrl-c will cancel.

The : key (while not editing a message) starts a command. You can list the commands with :show commands. :help may provide more useful information.

There's currently no support for:

• Seeing messages earlier in your history
• Receiving zulipgrams while offline (maybe)
• Editing messages
• Sending reactji
• Tab-completion for usernames, or selecting them in some better way -- added!
• Edits appearing inline
• Calculating presence cleverly (you'll appear as fully online (green dot) at all times while running barnowl-zulip) should be fixed now!
• Many other desirable things

• Better default setup with more aliases
• Automatic color configuration