Control: severity -1 important A few days ago, Pidgin 2.94.0 was released as yet another "pre-alpha" [1]. The Pidgin developers have consistently released new snapshot builds every 3 months since the beginning of 2025. I read through the release notes and I installed Pidgin 2.94.0 from Flathub Beta. Here are some notes.
1. IRC is the only protocol working so far. I don't know when XMPP will be ready. People who need XMPP could try dino-im instead. 2. Pidgin's core will only have open protocols (IRC, XMPP, Matrix, etc.). Not-so-open protocols will need to be separate plugins. I don't think work has started on Matrix yet. I am guessing it's too early for there to be plugins for Pidgin 3 yet. 3. Everything using libpurple will need to make major changes [2]. Developers suggested they may eventually add a compatibility layer to make it easier for things already using libpurple, but not until the API is more finalized. 4. There are several new external libraries that will need to be packaged. 5. Finch, a command line version of Pidgin, is no longer provided. 6. The Pidgin developers recommend that this version of Pidgin not be packaged for end users yet. The Debian GNOME team have announced [3] their goal of removing GTK2 for Forky. Based on my experience landing gimp 3 for Trixie which also broke everything compiled against gimp 2, I recommend letting pidgin be removed from Testing. File RC bugs against everything built against pidgin and libpurple. Package transitions technically only happen when updating something in Testing to something else. Since Pidgin won't be in Testing, there is no formal Pidgin 3 transition needed. I expect we have about a year or so before Forky starts freezing for the Debian 14 release in 2027. I think it would be good to get pidgin 3 into Experimental in the next few months, even if we intend to wait until later in the year to get it into Unstable. [1] https://discourse.imfreedom.org/t/pidgin-3-0-experimental-5-2-94-0-has-been-released/338 [2] https://docs.imfreedom.org/purple3/migrating.html [3] https://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2026/01/msg00090.html Thank you, Jeremy Bícha
