Get the Pidgin Plugins

Download a Package

Windows Users

Consult the Downloads section linked at the top of this page. We provide prebuilt executable installers to install our plugins for you in some cases, and zip files containing the necessary files for manual installation in all current cases.

Linux Users

Most Linux users will want to download a prebuilt package for their distribution. The method for this can vary slightly. For example, the Guifications 2.x plugin can be downloaded through the default package management tools for Debian-based Linux distributions (apt) and for Fedora 7 Linux distributions (yum). Gentoo users would use the 'emerge' command to install the package. These are simply a few examples; please consult the documentation for the normal method of installing packages for your distribution if it hasn't been mentioned here.

If your distribution does not provide packages for our plugins, you will probably need to build from source. Please note that we do not provide packages for Debian-based Linux systems, as out-of-distro packages often can inadvertently cause problems--if the package isn't available there, please consider contributing to your distribution in order to get our plugins included.

UNIX Users

Several unofficial packages of Pidgin and Guifications 2.x exist and can be found through your favorite search engine, but we can't confirm the authenticity or usability of these packages. *BSD users may be able to install some or all of our plugins through the ports system. Other users will likely need to install our plugins from source.

Download the Source

For any users who don't have prebuilt packages available to them, a source-based installation is required. Note that some common libraries, applications, and standard development tools are required:

  • an ANSI C compiler
  • GNU make
  • GNU gettext
  • intltool
  • libtool
  • GTK+ and GLib with necessary development headers
  • freetype2 if building Guifications
  • several other libraries and applications (FIXME!!!)
  • an existing installation of Pidgin with development headers (may require installation of a pidgin-dev or pidgin-devel package), which therefore also requires Pidgin's required dependencies
  • on Windows systems, a proper  Windows Pidgin Build Environment ("WPBE"). It is extremely important that the instructions presented at that link be followed precisely in order to have a fully functional build environment that will build the plugins.

To download the source, go to the Downloads section linked at the top of this page and look for the source package, usually a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 file. In some cases a .src.rpm may exist for RPM-based distributions (these require that an RPM package was used to install Pidgin). For verification, use the .tar.gz.asc and .tar.bz2.asc files.

To install from the downloaded source, follow the standard process to build a source package--unpack, ./configure in the resulting directory, make or gmake (if GNU make is not the default make on your system) to build, and make install (or gmake install if GNU make is not the default make on your system). If the configure script fails, pay attention to the error messages. Usually the messages will tell you what you need to install to fix the problem.

Windows users wishing to build the plugins will need to follow the  WinPidgin Build Instructions to get a functional WPBE working. Downloading and compiling Pidgin is also necessary. More details to come.

Getting the code from Mercurial

Before doing this, make sure you understand why we say not to use Mercurial (hg). We will not support anyone using hg code, no matter how many times you ask for help. In addition to the requirements listed under "Download the Source", when using hg code you must have autoconf, automake, libtool, intltool, and libtoolize installed, as well as an ANSI C compliant C compiler.

  • Debian-based systems should install the build-essential, autoconf, automake1.7 or newer, libtool, and intltool packages, at minimum.
  • RedHat-style systems will need to install the necessary development tools via whatever package management mechanism is appropriate. Package names are too different across the myriad of RedHat-style distributions for us to keep a comprehensive list of package names to install.

Note that all our development in CVS, SVN, and MTN has stopped. We did not migrate our CVS history, so we are keeping access to CVS around for historical purposes. We did, however, migrate our subversion history to monotone, then to mercurial. If you intend to modify existing code or use our plugins in conjunction with Pidgin's monotone trunk, you will need to use our hg code. If you still want to use development code, or if you're going to contribute code to us, then read the notes for contributors and developers.

CVS - Historical reference ONLY!

We no longer commit anything to CVS. We use it for historical purposes only. To retrieve our code from CVS, use cvs -d:pserver:anonymous@guifications.cvs.sourceforge.net:/cvsroot/guifications co module_name where module_name is one of the following:

  • guifications - the old Guifications 1.x code
  • guifications2 - the old Guifications 2.x code
  • plugin_pack - an old version of the Plugin Pack code
  • gaim-clam - an abandoned plugin to make Clam Antivirus scan files received through file transfer in Pidgin
  • gaim-dbi-logger - an abandoned SQL logging facility for Pidgin
  • gaim-ignorance - the original author abandoned this Pidgin plugin and we took it over, but we haven't done any work on it in ages
  • gaim-plonkers - a plugin that has been absorbed into the Plugin Pack in Subversion
  • gaim-xmms-remote - an XMMS remote control plugin that has been absorbed into the Plugin Pack in Subversion
  • media-remote - an abandoned set of plugins that would have made it possible to control numerous media players from Pidgin
  • slashexec - a plugin to implement a basic command-line interpreter for Pidgin that has been incorporated into the Plugin Pack in Subversion
  • theme_howto - a docbook which intended to give a detailed how-to on writing Guifications themes
  • web - our old Sourceforge website, kept in CVS

Last Modified by jbailey, 14 months ago