GSoC idea - Plugin repository on pidgin.im

[Ka-Hing Cheung]

Please CC devel at pidgin.im or reply-to-list.

On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 17:06 -0700, Ibrahim Awwal wrote:
> With regard to native plugins, I actually hadn't even thought of that.
> I assumed that all plugins would be open source, but now I realize
> that even with open source you can't guarantee that the source
> corresponds to the binary without compiling it yourself, and I'm
> pretty sure it would be impossible to set up a pidgin build
> environment on Google App Engine. I also had a thought after writing

It's not just a security issue. Think about how someone who only has a
linux box to distribute the plugin to another person using Windows?

Of course, I am not saying you need to completely solve this, but at
least something needs to be done.

> that previous email; it should be a libpurple plugin database, since
> not all plugins depend on Pidgin specifically (am I right?) so eg.
> third party protocol plugins or plugins that don't depend on a GTK+
> GUI would work under Finch and Adium and hopefully Vulture if that
> gets off the ground this summer as well. Or should I just keep it
> limited to Pidgin plugins in the beginning but say, keep a field in
> the database for application, so that it can later be extended to
> other libpurple clients?

I wouldn't mind for this to be pidgin only at the beginning (you will
need to modify the UI for this anyway), but ideally this can be extended
to cover other UIs. Note that Adium does not directly support libpurple
plugins.

> 
> Would a week-by-week timeline be good? I will hopefully submit a
> thorough application later today; I just sent this email because I
> wanted to make sure I would not be wasting my time by applying.

It doesn't have to be week-by-week, but something more detailed than
"first half" "second half" would be nice.

-khc