Fwd: GSoC idea - Plugin repository on pidgin.im

[Ibrahim Awwal]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ibrahim Awwal <ibrahim.awwal at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 5:06 PM
Subject: Re: GSoC idea - Plugin repository on pidgin.im
To: Ka-Hing Cheung <khc at hxbc.us>


On Sat, Mar 28, 2009 at 3:45 PM, Ka-Hing Cheung <khc at hxbc.us> wrote:
> On Sat, 2009-03-28 at 12:33 -0700, Ibrahim Awwal wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm a first year undergraduate EECS student at UC Berkeley and a
>> longtime user of Pidgin. I realize this is a little late but I just
>> thought of the idea and was not sure whether you guys would like it so
>> I decided to send this email before wasting my time applying. One of
>
> It's a little late, but this is one just more reason to apply first!
> After you've applied we can give feedbacks on the application too.
>
>> Depending on what you guys think, I would follow the following timeline:
>> The first half of the summer or so, i.e. up to the mid-term
>> evaluations, I would work on the web app back end, basic front end,
>> and providing the data in a clean way (for the update checker or other
>> applications that want to use the data). For the second half, I would
>> work on polishing the front end and the update checker.
>
> I think this is a good idea. I think the application should include more
> details about how native plugins are going to be handled (there's no way
> we can audit a compiled plugin, and also platform differences). Also
> please include a more detailed timeline.
>
> -khc
>
>
>

Cool, thanks! I just wanted to make sure that this was not something
that people would be opposed to. I will apply soon then.

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
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?

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.
--Ibrahim Awwal