[GSoC 2012] Statscollector Status and Updates

[Sanket Agarwal]

Hi All,

As quite a few of you know that I was working on the statscollector
plugin for pidgin. The task can be described two comprise of two
parts:

* Create a plugin to collect information about the hardware/OS/libpurple specs
* Server which can collate these specs.

I am very happy that I have completed almost everything that I had
promised through my proposal. The statscollector is up and running
:-)!. I have created a wiki at [1] for a more concrete information
page on Statscollector. Also there are details about some of the
interesting components of designing the plugin+server.

As always, you are most welcome to try the plugin available at [2],
currently I am supporting only pidgin-2.x.y and not 3.0.0 but if we do
plan to make this permanent soon, I am more than happy to do that part
of the work.

There are two things that the community can help me with --
1. Testing the plugin, by compiling/installing it. I try to ship out
.dll's for windows but then I cannot keep in sync all the time due to
constant changes
2. Code review -- specifically the plugin part, as it'll (if at all)
get merged upstream

I would lastly like to thank, Eion for his constant tips on how to
make "burgers" while I was working :-P! Oh yes, the description was
indeed delicious Eion ;-).

Cherios
-Sanket

[1] -- http://developer.pidgin.im/wiki/GSoC2012/Statscollector
[2] -- http://hg.pidgin.im/soc/2012/sanket/statscollector-2.x.y/