Install Pidgin with a non-default configuration?

[Mark Doliner]

On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 4:53 PM, Michael Köndling <m_koendl at yahoo.de> wrote:
> is there any way to install pidgin with a non-default configuration.
> I would like to activate some plugins and disable logging.

I believe Pidgin allows for a default prefs.xml file to be placed in
/etc/purple/ (on Linux) or CSIDL_COMMON_APPDATA/purple/ (on Windows).
The behavior is similar to Linux's /etc/skel/ directory, where the
file is imported once the first time the user runs Pidgin, and I
believe the file is ignored after that.

> I know that these settings are stored in the prefs.xml.
> Even if I copy a preconfigured prefs.xml into (Windows 7)
>
> %appdata%/.purple
>
> the first time the user starts pidgin it is overwritten with the standard
> settings.

That sounds like something that shouldn't happen. If
%appdata%/.purple/prefs.xml exists then Pidgin should not disregard
those settings. It should read the file, augment it with any missing
settings, and save it again.