NCurses Direct Connect
Ncdc is a lightweight direct connect client with a friendly ncurses interface.
Get ncdc!
- Latest version
-
1.25 (2025-03-04 - ncdc-1.25.tar.gz ⓘ - changes)
Convenient static binaries for Linux: x86-64 ⓘ - i486 ⓘ - ARM ⓘ - AArch64 ⓘ. Check the installation instructions for more info.
- Development version
-
The latest development version is available from git and can be cloned
using
git clone git://g.blicky.net/ncdc.git. The repository is available for online browsing. - Requirements
-
The following libraries are required: ncurses, zlib, bzip2, sqlite3, glib2 and gnutls.
Ncdc is entirely written in C and available under a liberal MIT license.
- Community
-
- Bug tracker - For bugs reports, feature requests and patches.
adcs://dc.blicky.net:2780/- For real-time chat.
TLS fingerprint as of 2024-10-04 is 5ZFSEGG26HUYZ7NXD6BARU6JHGLF7WNCP3LNYEFACMPRDFJKUEVA.
- Project Status
- Passive maintenance. No active development has been happening for a while, but I’m still around to implement fixes and the occasional feature update.
- Packages and ports
-
Are available for the following systems: Arch Linux - Debian - Fedora - FreeBSD - Frugalware - GNU Guix - Gentoo - Homebrew - OpenSUSE - Source Mage - Ubuntu - Void Linux.
A convenient installer is available for Android as well.
Features
Common features all non-ancient DC clients (should) have:
- Connecting to multiple hubs at the same time,
- Support for both ADC and NMDC protocols,
- Chatting and private messaging,
- Browsing the user list of a connected hub,
- Share management and file uploading,
- Connections and download queue management,
- File list browsing,
- TTH-checked, multi-source and segmented file downloading,
- Searching for files,
- Secure hub (adcs:// and nmdcs://) and client connections on both protocols,
- Bandwidth throttling,
- IPv6 support.
And special features not commonly found in other clients:
- Different connection settings for each hub,
- Encrypted UDP messages (ADC SUDP),
- Subdirectory refreshing,
- Nick notification and highlighting in chat windows,
- Trust on First Use for TLS-enabled hubs,
- A single listen port for both TLS and TCP connections,
- Efficient file uploads using sendfile(),
- Large file lists are opened in a background thread,
- Doesn’t trash your OS file cache (with the flush_file_cache option enabled),
- (Relatively…) low memory usage.
What doesn’t ncdc do?
Since the above list is getting larger and larger every time, it may be more interesting to list a few features that are (relatively) common in other DC clients, but which ncdc doesn’t do.
- NAT Traversal,
- OP features (e.g. client detection, file list scanning and other useful stuff for OPs),
- SOCKS support.
Of course, there are many more features that could be implemented or improved, but given development is currently kind of dead, there’s a good chance none of it will happen anytime soon.