GSoC 2012 : Pidgin Plugin Website

[Mark Doliner]

On Sat, Mar 24, 2012 at 7:26 PM, Nikhil Bafna <nikhil.bafna.r at gmail.com> wrote:
> I wanted to ask this. The plugin viewer would be stand-alone website, or
> integrated into pidgin.im?

This isn't clear.  I'm sure different people have different opinions...

Personally I think it makes sense for plugins to be viewable on a
website.  Having them also viewable within Pidgin doesn't seem
necessary to me.  After all, why should Pidgin duplicate functionality
from a web browser?  However, it kinda depends on how the plugin is
installed.

Ease of use of plugins has never been great on Linux.  And packaging
to make plugins easier to use is probably a burden for plugin authors.
 I don't know whether it makes sense to lump these tasks in with this
project, but someone may want to consider ways to make this process
easier.

For example, for Linux users, maybe they could download a .c file, or
a zip containing the source, and Pidgin automatically invokes gcc,
compiles the plugin, installs it in the user's local ~/.purple/
directory, and cleans up after itself.  It would need to show friendly
messages if the user needs to install gcc, or needs to install the
pidgin-devel rpm or pidgin-dev dpkg.  And it would need to be able to
check for updates and update the plugin, possibly automatically.