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Can someone shed some light on the landscape here? I thought there were only 2 possible ways to use Signal; the mobile apps and the desktop. Is this CLI app som

by tombh 6y ago

Can someone shed some light on the landscape here? I thought there were only 2 possible ways to use Signal; the mobile apps and the desktop. Is this CLI app somehow talking to them? If anyone can make a client, then what's stopping someone from building better mobile apps and indeed a web client!? Other than of course the sheer effort that's involved obviously.

rvense 6y ago
The CLI is Java and probably not well documented. In the past I think Open Whisper systems have been hostile to third party client builds interacting with their servers, so I'm not sure they'd welcome third party client implementations.
- danudey 6y ago
  I mean, as soon as third-party clients were a thing, the Play and App stores would be immediately clogged up with Signal clones left right and centre, all of which steal your data and then ??? it.
anfogoat 6y ago
This uses signal-cli[0] (communication happens over D-Bus) and signal-cli in turn uses a patched version of libsignal-service-java[1]. The latter might be used in some of the clients provided by Signal (not sure) but the signal-cli + libsignal-service-java combo talks to Signal servers instead of any apps running locally. Nothing is stopping you from building a web client for yourself. [0]: https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli https://github.com/AsamK/signal-cli [1]: https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal-service-java https://github.com/signalapp/libsignal-service-java
- tombh 6y ago
  I guess libsignal-service-java might be used in the Android app?
  - anfogoat 6y ago
    That's what I was thinking too but then last commit was 7 months ago. Not sure if any of the latest features would have required new code in libsignal-service-java though.