annotate PLUGIN_HOWTO @ 24332:2b62300d2c19

Use libtool to build static archives when --with-static-prpls is passed to configure. Does anyone know why we weren't using libtool before? We were building old-fashioned .a files. But libtool archives (.la) can contain either static or shared libraries. I found it a lot easier to get static prpl compilation working after making this change (that is to say, it worked). Without this I got this error, which is probably fixable, but consistently using libtool seems like it makes things easier: *** Warning: Linking the shared library libpurple.la against the *** static library ../libpurple/protocols/msn/libmsn.a is not portable! /usr/bin/ld: ../libpurple/protocols/msn/libmsn.a(libmsn_a-msn.o): relocation R_X86_64_32 against `a local symbol' can not be used when making a shared object; recompile with -fPIC ../libpurple/protocols/msn/libmsn.a: could not read symbols: Bad value collect2: ld returned 1 exit status

For information on writing a plugin for Purple, Pidgin or Finch, go
http://developer.pidgin.im and click on API.  From there, see the HOWTOs in the
"Related Pages" section.

You can also generate this documentation locally by installing
doxygen and graphviz dot, then running "make docs" in the
source tree.  The documentation will be in the docs/html directory.