Getting the software

Irssi runs on Unix-like systems. If you download the source code, you have to compile it. If you do not want to compile it, you can try binary packages.

Current release source code download:

Download: https://codeberg.org/irssi/irssi/releases/download/1.4.5/irssi-1.4.5.tar.xz
Signature: https://codeberg.org/irssi/irssi/releases/download/1.4.5/irssi-1.4.5.tar.xz.asc
Note. Apply perl-again.patch when building Irssi with Perl 5.37 or later. Otherwise Irssi’s locale/unicode handling may break due to a bug in Perl. See Perl/perl5#21366

You should verify the signature file using gpg --verify to make sure that the download was not tampered with.

Alternatively, the current Git development source can be found on Codeberg.

Compiling

You need Ninja 1.5 and Meson 0.49

Then you type the following commands in your shell:

tar xJf irssi-*.tar.xz
cd irssi-*
meson Build
ninja -C Build && sudo ninja -C Build install

Some more details can be found in the INSTALL file.

Distribution packages

Many distributions have an Irssi package! Search for irssi in your package manager of choice.

Windows

If you want to use Irssi on Windows, you can do so either through Cygwin (search for and enable irssi in the “Cygwin Setup - Select Packages” screen) or with Microsoft’s Linux VM WSL.

Binary packages

The openSUSE Build Service is creating binary builds for popular Linux distributions (Debian, Fedora). These can be installed with root permissions using the distribution package manager.

You can find there an automated build of the release or the current Git, together with the Build Service-provided installation instructions.