Inet-chat

A real-time TCP chat application

Warning

This is a toy project I made to learn application programming in C and such, is only intended to use for learning and integration test purposes

Table of Contents

• Requirements
• Installation
• Usage
• Features
• Changelog

Requirements

• gcc, or any C compiler
• POSIX-compliant operating system
• Makefile (optional but recommended)

Quick Start

git clone https://github.com/jakubmartenekdev/inet-chat.git
cd inet-chat/
make all DEBUG=0
sudo make install DEBUG=0 # Optional, avoid typing full path ./build/debug/bin/<prog>

Using build script

git clone https://github.com/jakubmartenekdev/inet-chat.git
cd inet-chat/
./build.sh

Usage

Note

Type "localhost" for <server-addr> if you're testing this on a local machine

server <port>
client <server-addr> <port> [OPTIONS]

Options

Option	Description
-h short for --help	display help message
-n short for --name	set up username to be displayed before the message

Features

• Tcp client with simple TUI
• Tcp server that broadcasts messages
• Uses threadpool
• IPv4 support
• IPv6 support
• UNIX sockets support
• Makefile
• Build script
• Criterion - testing framework
• Unit tests
• Integrated tests
• Many memory leaks

Changelog

[1.7.1] - 2026 Sun Jan 4

Changed

• Fixed a bug where the server wouldn't notify clients after shutdown, leaving clients hanging indefinitely or causing unexpected behavior

To fix

• Add more debug logs, especially on server

[1.7.0] - 2025 Sun Dec 28

Added

• Build script to further automate building process
• User nickname is displayed before the message

To fix

• Notify client after the server is shut down

[1.6.0] - 2025 Sat Dec 27

Added

• Automatic scroll at the end of area buffer

Changed

• I changed append buffer to behave slightly differently, it stores char** instead od char* which is basically what vector does, this allows me to have a better control of how I want to render the screen

[1.5.0] - 2025 Fri Dec 26

Added

• Usage messages

[1.4.1] - 2025 Mon Dec 22

Changed

• Many network programs send and receive buffers suffixed with newline character and without null terminator, so I fixed the code to satisfy this "convention?", anyway, client has better support with third party software like tcpbin, which I tested and it works fine

To fix

• More descriptive usage messages
• Add metadata to messages

[1.4.0] - 2025 Sun Dec 21

Changed

• Fixed bug where sent text appeard inline because of incorrect use of a new line character

Added

• make install && make uninstall

To fix

• Add scroll in the client tui, when the buffer reaches the end of window, scroll automatically

[1.3.1] - 2025 Sat Dec 20

Changed

• Server uses thread pool instead of processes to handle client requests

[1.3.0] - 2025 Fri Dec 19

Added

• Criterion testing framework, controlled with Makefile
• Common header files for ll_queue.c and client.c

[1.2.2] - 2025 Thu Dec 18

Changed

• Refactored Makefile, made use of built in functions like wildcard, patsubst and filter-out
• Changed project structure, including added sub-directories for binaries

[1.2.1] - 2025 Fri Dec 12

Changed

• Append buffer now stores an initial capacity, making it more effective by doubling the size when it's full and limits calls to realloc

To fix

• Apparently there's a bug, when I append too many messages, program crashes

[1.2.0] - 2025 Sun Dec 7

Added

• Makefile

To fix

• Implement a thread pool

[1.1.0] - 2025 Sun Nov 30

Added

• Message broadcasting

Changed

• Socket reads are now non blocking

To fix

• [ ] Client socket should be in shared memory for proper cleanup
• Let have more than 5 connections per server runtime

[1.0.0] - 2025 Sat Nov 29

Added

• Initial release
• Socket API
• Hostname to address translation

Changed

• N/A

Fixed

• N/A