brbtimer - a simple livestreaming timer

This is a tiny utility program that allows setting a timer in seconds, and then visualizes the passage of time with a simple animation sequence.

Its intended use is for livestreaming, in screencasting software like OBS you can create a window capture and use chroma keys to isolate the animation from the contrasting background to have a nice overlay for your recording scene.

I never intended to share this software, because I created it for myself, but there's no harm sharing it in an open-source manner, is there?

Usage

brbtimer needs to be invoked from a command line interface in order to work. You pass the amount of time you want it to count down via command parameters.
The quickest way to understand the syntax is with examples:

brbtimer 10s    # sets timer to 10 seconds
brbtimer 3m     # sets timer to 3 minutes
brbtimer 5h     # sets timer to 5 hours

You can pass as many options as you like, the sum will be calculated:

brbtimer 1s 2s 3s 4s   # sets timer to 10 seconds
brbtimer 1h 5m 10s     # sets timer to 1 hour, 5 minutes and 10 seconds
brbtimer 2h 3m 1h 4m   # sets timer to 3 hours, 7 minutes

The default time unit is seconds, so 's' can be omitted:

brbtimer 5      # sets timer to 5 seconds
brbtimer 1m 2   # sets timer to 1 minute, 2 seconds

Once the program has started, you will be required to press enter once to start the countdown. Alternatively, you can pass the -n or --noconfirm option to begin the countdown immediately. Once the countdown has finished, pressing enter again will close the program. You may also terminate execution at any time with ctrl+q.

Building from source (GNU/Linux)

Prerequisites

• GNU GCC compiler
• Allegro 5

Installation

Run the following (if necessary, as root):

make install

Note that the installation creates a symlink inside /usr/local/bin which points to the cloned brbtimer directory. This is because the executable depends on the brbtimer/res directory's contents, so you can't just delete the downloaded directory afterwards.
The man page, brbtimer(1) will be installed to /usr/share/man/man1/brbtimer.

To uninstall the program, run (if necessary, as root):

make uninstall

Other Platforms

brbtimer was built using the Allegro 5 library, which is cross-platform. That said, I've never tried compiling for other operating systems, so if you're a Windows, Mac or other user, the first step would probably be looking inside the Makefile and figuring out how to run the appropriate commands on your system.