date: 2019-01-11T03:13:47.000Z
lastmod: 2019-09-04T03:20:39.000Z If you're building for Windows you'll want to have a look at
[
the building on Windows page](
{{< ref "development/building/2.x.y/windows" >}})
Pidgin's default build has a lot of dependencies. This document will hopefully
help you find and install them all.
### Packaged Dependencies These dependencies are ones that should be found in your distribution's package
### I have the source; how do I build this thing? Assuming you have all of the necessary libraries and their headers installed
(see the next few questions), you compile libpurple, Pidgin and Finch just like
$ tar xjvf pidgin-2.x.y.tar.bz2
$ ./configure && make && sudo make install
This will install libpurple, Pidgin and Finch to
`/usr/local`. If you want to
install it elsewhere, pass
`--prefix=/some/other/prefix` to
`./configure`. (You
really don't want to install it to
`/usr`.) See
`./configure --help` for other
options you can change at compile-time.
If you got the source tree from our Mercurial database (which you probably
shouldn't have), you'll need to run
`./autogen.sh` instead of
`./configure` the
first time around. If you get an error like the following, you may need a newer
running /usr/bin/automake -a -c --gnu... failed.
Makefile.am:79: directory should not contain `/'
pidgin/pixmaps/Makefile.am:4: directory should not contain `/'
If you are trying to compile on Windows, you need the answer to a different
### Why can't I compile Pidgin? You're probably missing some dependencies. The
`configure` script will tell you
when you are missing required dependencies. Remember that if you're using an
RPM-based (RedHat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, SUSE, Mandriva, etc.) or
Debian-based system (Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) that having just a library's package
installed is not sufficient--you must also have the
`-devel` (RPM systems) or
`-dev` (Debian-based systems) package for each library installed. If
`configure` is succeeding, but
`make` fails, this is harder to diagnose and you will
probably want to drop by the IRC channel or XMPP conference listed on
the [
Contact](
{{< ref "contact" >}}) page to get help.
### How do I install the dependencies on Debian or Ubuntu? You need to install the development headers; these are the
`-dev` packages. A
simple
`apt-get build-dep pidgin` will find and install all of the required
If
`apt-get build-dep` fails with a message like
E: You must put some 'source' URIs in your sources.list
then you need to add
`deb-src` lines to your
`/etc/apt/sources.list`corresponding to each of the
`deb` lines already there. If editing configuration
files scares you, Ubuntu has a "Software Sources" control panel in
_System_ ->
_Administration_ which has some magic checkboxes to do this for you.
### How do I install the dependencies on Fedora (or similar)? RPM-based distribution users may find
`yum-builddep pidgin`useful if a source RPM is available and the distribution uses the yum tools.
Note that on current Fedora, you would use
`dnf builddep pidgin`, which is in
the
`dnf-plugins-core` package. If you're still using yum, the
`yum-builddep`command is in the
`yum-utils` package, which is not necessarily installed by
### How do I apply the patch "something.diff"? Type
`patch -p1 < something.diff` from the top level of the source directory
(
`pidgin/`, not
`pidgin/pidgin/` or
`pidgin/finch/`).
### Is there a way to compile without some protocols? There are actually two ways:
- Run
`./configure` with the
`--with-static-prpls` option with the
`--disable-plugins` option. This will let you choose which protocols to
include by specifying them as a comma-separated list, such as the following
(but note that you won't be able to use any other protocols or plugins):
`./configure --disable-plugins --with-static-prpls=irc,bonjour` - Use the
`--with-dynamic-prpls` option to
`./configure` by specifying a
comma-separated list, like so:
`./configure --with-dynamic-prpls=irc,xmpp`### Can I compile just Finch, not Pidgin? Sure. Pass
`--disable-gtkui` to
`./configure`.
