Install command line Twitter client Termtter on Mac OS X

Yes, I know you’re asking why would I want to do that, install a command line Twitter client on your Mac when there are so many cool and useful apps with great interfaces? The geek in me would say “because you can.” And that’s true to an extent, that it’s cool to find out that it actually works. One other reason may be that you’re more comfortable working with a command line, at least for something like Twitter. Termtter is a command line client that runs in the Terminal app on your Mac. This is not for everyone but for someone who wants to try something different it’s certainly interesting. Anyway, here are some details of how to install Termtter on your Mac. I should add that apparently it runs in Windows as well and I’ll try to come back with instructions for that as well soon.

For the rest of this article I assume you’re comfortable with starting and using the Terminal app. I will not explain how to edit a hidden configuration file, for example. If you don’t know how to do that, Google can help.

Considering Termtter’s instructions page is rather sparse and in Japanese (I guess) I went searching for how to get it working and here it is with pieces from all over the web.

Installation

First install the MacPorts project software package. Basically you download a less than 500kb disk image and run one installer. Right when it looks like the installer is done it was just sitting there doing nothing for many minutes. I was suspicious but a look at the installer log revealed that it was downloading stuff from MacPorts with a list of files and more.

To get MacPorts to run I had to add this to the .bash_profile file:

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:$PATH


Next, install the necessary Ruby files by typing this in a Terminal window:

sudo port install ruby


Then I got a message saying

Computing dependencies for rubyError: Unable to execute port: can't read "build.cmd": Failed to locate 'make' in path: '/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin' or at its MacPorts configuration time location, did you move it?


So I found a suggestion online saying that you have to have XCode installed so that’s what I did. Once installed the “sudo port install ruby” command worked fine.

Once that “ruby” command (took about an hour to download and install) had finished I put in the next one:

sudo gem install termtter


Again that runs for a while and once done you should be able to start Termtter:

termtter


You will be asked for your Twitter username and password and after that you’re all set to go tweeting all you want. To find out what commands are available you can type “help” or just “h” and you will see a list of commands. Here are just a few of them:

Exit: exit,quit
Follow user: follow USER
Show followers: followers
Leave user: leave USER
Show the API limit status: limit,lm
List the replies: replies,r
Send a reply: reply,re @USERNAME or STATUS_ID
Post a retweet message: retweet,rt (ID|@USER)
Post a new message: update,u TEXT
Post a retweet message: retweet,rt (ID|@USER)
List direct messages: direct,d list
List sent direct messages: direct,d sent_list
Reload timeline: reload
Show a user's timeline: list @USER
Search tweets for keyword: search KEYWORD


In action