[Pidgin] #5772: Automatic Plugin Updating

[Pidgin]

#5772: Automatic Plugin Updating
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 Reporter:  IbrahimA  |       Type:  enhancement
   Status:  new       |   Priority:  minor      
Component:  plugins   |    Version:             
 Keywords:            |    Pending:  0          
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 This is just a long-term wish that I had for Pidgin and/or libpurple, that
 I might be able to work on a year from now when I've had some formal
 instruction in C. So if anyone wants to work on this, that's great but if
 not I'm willing to work on it when I'm better with C.

 Basically, it would be useful if Pidgin would check for plugin updates in
 the same way Firefox does for extensions and themes. The way I would (and
 might) implement this would be to add a field to the PurplePluginInfo
 struct called updateURL which would simply point to a text file with the
 latest version number of the plugin, which would be compared against the
 local plugin's version number. If the version didn't match, Pidgin could
 prompt the user about the updated plugin and then link to the plugin's
 homepage so that the user could update it.

 Alternatively, and probably eventually, the text file could be an XML file
 with links to binaries for various platforms as well as the latest version
 number, so that Pidgin could automatically download and install updated
 plugins, although this would be more complicated.

 I think this would only be possible in a major version since it changes
 API, correct? What are your thoughts on this? If I were to also
 incorporate a system for automatically updating Pidgin (i.e. downloading
 and installing the update, after notifying the user as the current system
 does) would that be a good Summer of Code project for next year? Right now
 I'm a senior in high school so I don't think I would have been eligible
 for this year's SoC, and in any case I don't have enough C experience as I
 said above.

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Ticket URL: <http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/5772>
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