view README @ 31000:8a03508dd6f4

Change the "Manual" browser command pref's name to allow for a relatively simple migration of an existing value from the path pref to the new string pref. As I note in the comment in the migration code, I realize this will break things for and confuse those users who use the same config directory for mutliple versions of Pidgin, but I'm not inclined to devise a solution that will make that work. The solution I've implemented fixes the most important case--users who upgrade. The rest of the world will just have to move on. Refs #12024.

Purple, Pidgin and Finch
========================
See AUTHORS and COPYRIGHT for the list of contributors.

libpurple is a library intended to be used by programmers seeking
to write an IM client that connects to many IM networks.  It supports
AIM, ICQ, XMPP, MSN and Yahoo!, among others.

Pidgin is an graphical IM client written in C which uses the GTK+
toolkit.

Finch is a text-based IM client written in C which uses the ncurses
toolkit.

These programs are not endorsed by, nor affiliated with, AOL nor any
other company in any way.

BUILD
=====

Read the 'INSTALL' file for more detailed directions.

These programs use the standard ./configure ; make. You need to use
gmake, BSD make probably won't work. Remember, run ./configure --help
to see what build options are available.

In order to compile Pidgin you need to have GTK+ 2.0 installed (as
well as the development files!). The configure script will fail if you
don't.  If you don't have GTK+ 2.0 installed, you should install it
using your distribution's package management tools.

For sound support, you also need gstreamer 0.10 or higher. For
spellchecking support, you need libgtkspell (http://gtkspell.sf.net/).
Your distro of choice probably already includes these, just be sure to
install the development packages.

RUN
===

You should run 'make install' as root to make sure plugins and other files
get installed into locations they want to be in. Once you've done that,
you only need to run 'pidgin' or 'finch'.

To get started, simply add a new account.

If you come across a bug, please report it at: http://pidgin.im

PLUGINS
=======

If you do not wish to enable the plugin support within Purple, run the
./configure script with the --disable-plugins option and recompile your
source code.  This will prevent the ability to load plugins.

'make install' puts the plugins in $PREFIX/lib/purple (PREFIX being what
you specified when you ./configure'd - it defaults to /usr/local). Purple
looks for the plugins in that directory by default.  Plugins can be installed
per-user in ~/.purple/plugins as well.  Pidgin and Finch also look in
$PREFIX/lib/pidgin and $PREFIX/lib/finch for UI-specific, respectively.

To build a plugin from a .c file, put it in the plugins/ directory in
the source and run 'make filename.so', e.g. if you have the .c file
'kickass.c', put it in the plugins/ directory, and from that directory,
run 'make kickass.so'.