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authorGary Kramlich <grim@reaperworld.com>2021-03-19 02:46:44 -0500
committerGary Kramlich <grim@reaperworld.com>2021-03-19 02:46:44 -0500
commitc3b924920e0af9c7041c2f9f91ed1c84b932d9b2 (patch)
tree38180eb4433e12c18a7e43a8ed2f558f8530d9b8 /README
parente17782da95d5744ea02ac33e3ef279b1971befb8 (diff)
downloadpidgin-c3b924920e0af9c7041c2f9f91ed1c84b932d9b2.tar.gz
Refresh the README as a few things have moved and some of the wording was weird.
Testing Done: Read it a few times. Reviewed at https://reviews.imfreedom.org/r/568/
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# Purple, Pidgin and Finch
-See AUTHORS and COPYRIGHT for the list of contributors.
-libpurple is a library intended to be used by programmers seeking
-to write an IM client that connects to many IM networks. It comes
-with support for Bonjour, IRC, XMPP, among others, and there are
-many more networks supported via third party protocols.
+libpurple is a library intended to be used by programmers seeking to write an
+IM client that connects to many IM networks. It comes with support for Bonjour,
+IRC, and XMPP, among others and there are many more networks supported via
+[third party plugins](https://pidgin.im/plugins/).
-Pidgin is a graphical IM client written in C which uses the GTK+
-toolkit.
+Pidgin is a graphical IM client written in C, which uses the GTK toolkit.
-Finch is a text-based IM client written in C which uses the ncurses
-toolkit.
+Finch is a text-based IM client written in C, which uses
+[libgnt](https://keep.imfreedom.org/libgnt/libgnt).
-These programs are not endorsed by, nor affiliated with, any
-proprietary instant messaging company in any way.
+These programs are not endorsed by, nor affiliated with, any proprietary
+instant messaging company in any way.
-## BUILD
+## Contributors
-Pidgin uses [meson](https://mesonbuild.com) as a build system.
+See AUTHORS and COPYRIGHT for the list of contributors.
-You can quickly build Pidgin with the following commands
+## Building
- meson build
- cd build
- ninja
- ninja install
+Pidgin uses [Meson](https://mesonbuild.com) as its build system. There is a
+long list of dependencies that is not currently documented here due to
+differences in package names across operating systems. We plan to fix this
+soon, if you have any suggestions on how to handle this, please let us know.
-There are quite a few options for the build that you can view by looking at `meson_options.txt`. You can specify the options when running meson like the following:
+You can quickly build Pidgin with the following commands:
- meson -Ddebug=true build
+```
+meson build
+cd build
+ninja
+ninja install
+```
-If you've already ran meson you can use `meson configure`
+There are quite a few options for the build that you can view by running
+`meson configure` in your build directory. You can specify the options when
+running meson like the following:
- cd build
- meson configure -Ddebug=true
+```
+meson -Ddebug=true build
+```
-## RUN
+If you have already run `meson` you can use `meson configure`:
-Currently Pidgin can not be run from a build directory which means you must
-install it first. Once you've done that, you only need to run 'pidgin' or
-'finch'. If it fails to launch you may need to run `ldconfig` as root.
+```
+cd build
+meson configure -Ddebug=true
+```
-To get started, simply add a new account.
+## Running
-If you come across a bug, please report it at: https://developer.pidgin.im/
+Currently Pidgin can not be run from a build directory, which means you must
+install it first. Once you've done that, you only need to run `pidgin3` or
+`finch3`. If it fails to launch you may need to run `ldconfig` as root.
-## PLUGINS
+To get started, simply add a new account.
-If you do not wish to enable the plugin support within Purple, run meson with
-`-Dplugins=false` or if you've already ran meson use
-`meson configure -Dplugins=false` from the build directory. This will prevent
-the ability to load plugins.
+If you come across a bug, please report it at:
+[issues.imfreedom.org/issues/PIDGIN](https://issues.imfreedom.org/issues/PIDGIN)
-`ninja install` puts the plugins in `$PREFIX/lib/purple` (PREFIX being what
-you specified when you ran meson. It defaults to `/usr/local`). Purple
-looks for the plugins in that directory by default. Plugins can be installed
-per-user in `~/.purple/plugins` as well. Pidgin and Finch also look in
-`$PREFIX/lib/pidgin` and `$PREFIX/lib/finch` for UI-specific, respectively.
+## Plugins
-## Developing
+libpurple, Pidgin, and Finch ship with a number of plugins, but you can find
+additional third party plugins at
+[pidgin.im/plugins](https://pidgin.im/plugins).
-There is a ton of information on developing Pidgin available at
-[developer.pidgin.im](https://developer.pidgin.im).
+## Developing
-To generate the documentation locally you can pass `-Ddoc=true` to `meson` or
-`meson configure` which will build the `gtk-docs` for everything.
+You can find more information about Pidgin development in the
+[development section](https://pidgin.im/development/) of our website.