Luadch-NG Announcer

Luadch-NG Announcer is a release announcer for Luadch hubs. It logs into an ADC hub as a registered bot account (TLS only), scans configured local directories, and posts new release folders to the hub's main chat via the ADC OSNR extension.

This project consolidates two stale upstream tools - luadch/announcer_client (Win32 wxLua GUI, last release 2022) and luadch/announcer_bot (Win32 headless CLI, last release 2022) - into a single tree with one shared core and two thin frontends (CLI + GUI).

Features

• Cross-platform CLI and Windows GUI frontends
• Scans local directories for new release folders
• Posts announcements to ADC hubs via the OSNR extension
• Supports configurable blacklisting, whitelisting, and filtering
• Logs activity to local files (logfile.txt and announced.txt)
• Secure TLS-only hub connections
• Modular and extensible design

Requirements

• Hub must be a Luadch (or compatible) ADC hub with the OSNR protocol extension.
• Hub account must be a registered nick (not a guest).
• TLS is mandatory - no plain-text fallback.
• ptx_freshstuff installed

Configuration

Edit these files under cfg/ after a successful build. Each is a Lua file that returns a table; comments inline explain each field. For a full walkthrough (rules + filters + troubleshooting) see docs/USERGUIDE.md.

File	Purpose
cfg/cfg.lua	Global bot settings: announce interval, sleep / socket timeouts, log-rotation size, slots / share / upload-speed claims
cfg/hub.lua	Target hub: address, port, nick, password, TLS keyprint
cfg/sslparams.lua	LuaSec ssl.newcontext params: cert path, TLS protocol, ciphers
cfg/rules.lua	List of watched directories. Each rule = { path, category, command, filters }. Filters: blacklist, whitelist, checkspaces, checkage, checkdirsnfo, checkdirssfv, skip_hidden, max_per_extension
cfg/categories.lua	Category metadata for freshstuff-style multi-category announces
cfg/id.lua	Auto-generated on first run, gitignored. Holds the bot's ADC PID + CID (tiger-hash secret). DO NOT copy between deployments - each announcer needs its own identity, shared identity = two bots fight over the same nick on the hub. Delete the file to regenerate a fresh identity.

Path syntax (cfg/rules.lua)

The path field in each rule must use forward slashes on all platforms, including Windows. The Win32 API accepts both / and \, but Lua string literals require backslashes to be escaped (\\), which is error-prone.

-- Correct (cross-platform):
[ "path" ] = "C:/MyReleases",
[ "path" ] = "/home/user/releases",

-- Avoid (Lua-string-literal issue, "\M" is not a valid Lua escape):
[ "path" ] = "C:\MyReleases",

-- Workable but ugly:
[ "path" ] = "C:\\MyReleases",

About OSNR

OSNR is an ADC SUP feature flag for hub-side release-announce handling. The bot negotiates ADOSNR in its HSUP and disconnects if the hub does not advertise it back in ISUP. Once negotiated, the bot announces each release as a regular BMSG to the hub, prefixed with the per-rule command keyword (e.g. +addrel <release>). OSNR-aware hub scripts pick these tagged broadcasts out of the main-chat stream and render them as a structured release feed for clients that display one. Your hub must support OSNR - Luadch enables it by default. Without it, the bot refuses to log in.

Origins + credits

• Original Win32 GUI: luadch/announcer_client by pulsar (with jrock).
• Original headless bot: luadch/announcer_bot by blastbeat.
• This consolidation: luadch-ng org (this repo), 2026.

License

GPL-3.0. See LICENSE.