Support `ident` server on matrix-appservice-irc

[sergiodj]

Hi,

Realistically, IRC networks (like Libera.Chat) will require admins running matrix-appservice-irc to also provide an ident server accompanying it. The bridge software has support for a built-in ident server; all one has to do is to enable it:

ircService:
  ident:
    address: 0.0.0.0
    enabled: true
    port: 113
...

However, there's no easy way to adjust Traefik and make it listen to the correct external port and then route the requests to the container. It'd be great if the container supported labels so that we could at least implement our own routers/entrypoints for this.

[spantaleev]

The Traefik Ansible role should also be extensible enough to allow you to define new entrypoints (ident with an internal container port of 1234) and expose additional ports (via something like traefik_container_extra_arguments: ["-p 113:1234"]).

Still, it would probably be simpler if matrix-appservice-irc can be made to expose its 113 port directly on the host, without a reverse-proxy.

---

Based on the state of things (#4177 and the abandoned #3512 PR), I'd say matrix-appservice-irc is unmaintained until someone jumps in and takes care of it.

Given that most people are using Heisenbridge for simple bridging to IRC, it doesn't seem like anyone cares about matrix-appservice-irc. If you care, then feel free to open PRs for all that stuff!

[thomwiggers]

Is there some way to migrate rooms that exist on matrix-appservice-irc to Heisenbridge? That would allow me to get rid of this.

[sergiodj]

Heinsenbridge and matrix-appservice-irc are fundamentally different in the sense that the former is a 1:N type of bridge, while the latter is an N:N type. On the Matrix side things are pretty equal, but on IRC you will only see a relay bot when using Heisenbridge, while with matrix-appservice-irc you'll see puppet users for every Matrix counterpart.

Unfortunately, if your use case requires you to have an N:N bridge (as does mine), then you're stuck with matrix-appservice-irc for now.

[thomwiggers]

Yeah I use matrix as a replacement for IRC clients such as Quassel or IRCCloud, for multiple users, so I think that I need this double-puppeting.