Mercury

A Telegram client for Sailfish OS based on the Telethon API

License

Licensed under GNU GPLv3

Prerequirements

1. Telethon is not included (yet), so you need to install it on your Sailfish device. Telethon is under active development and occasionally breaks backward compatibility, so make sure to use the correct version:

devel-su
pip3 install telethon=0.15.5
exit

2. Obtain an API ID from Telegram
3. Create a file /home/nemo/.local/share/harbour-mercury/apikey on the Sailfish device and insert your API ID and API HASH, without the tags <> (Avoid being root here!):

mkdir -p /home/nemo/.local/share/harbour-mercury
cat <<EOF > /home/nemo/.local/share/harbour-mercury/apikey
api_id <ID>
api_hash <HASH>
EOF

4. Run Mercury using SailfishOS SDK, or copy and run manually:

• Copy the folders TgClient and qml to /usr/share/harbour-mercury/ on your SFOS device (requires root)

cd /home/nemo/Downloads
git clone https://github.com/chstem/harbour-mercury.git
devel-su
mkdir /usr/share/harbour-mercury
cd /home/nemo/Downloads/harbour-mercury/
cp -r TgClient qml /usr/share/harbour-mercury/
exit

• Run Mercury:

sailfish-qml harbour-mercury

• Optionally, install harbour-mercury_noarch.desktop as /usr/share/applications/harbour-mercury.desktop and install the icons under /usr/share/icons/hicolor/<resolution>/apps/

Performance Issues

• The connection to the Telegram servers is AES encrypted. If available, libssl.so will be used, otherwise a pure Python AES implementation serves as fallback. However, on mobile processors, this severely slows down network speed. If you experience slow download speed, make sure OpenSSL is installed:

devel-su
pkcon install openssl

Why the Name?

I choose the name because it nicely connects a couple of things:

• Mercury is a messenger in roman mythology
• Mercurial is a version control system written in Python
• being a scientist, I like the connection to the chemical element and planet