For those of you that don't know, I am the lead developer of Pidgin. As I stated a moment ago, I am EXPLICITLY pleading with packagers to not package these releases for end users yet. I do not have the time to be able to field user requests and bugs for stuff that is incomplete and not intended for general releases.
1. There are incomplete bonjour and xmpp plugins in the main install that you can't see because they're hidden behind the "developer mode" setting. 2. Like purple2, all protocols are plugins. If you're referring to third party protocols, they're not different and I have a twitch[1] plugin that works pretty well and is being used to finish wrapping up some of the more complicated modern apis. The recommendation for the twitch protocol plugin is to use a meson dev environment from a pidgin3 build. 3. As for package transitions, everything is new, the so names for purple2 is purple, and purple3 is purple3. There is no compatible transition, similar to the python 2 / 3 transition from years ago. So removing from testing is already pointless except that it will create more work for me personally because users are going to start trying to compile pidgin themselves, run into dependency issues, and will refuse my suggestions to use the flatpak for whatever reasons and everyone has a bad time. 4. hasl was already started here [2] there were additional ITPs for the others but no work has been done on them yet as far as I know. 5. Finch is dead until someone steps up to maintain finch and/or libgnt as we do not have the resources to continue maintaining them. 6. Yep, and here we are talking about it anyways... We've been anticipating that GTK2 will be removed from all distros most likely this year. We have been busting our asses to get something together so that Pidgin can remain in distros, but we just do not have the resources. If you look at the last release, you will see that absolutely everything came from me personally, if you look at the releases before that you'll see that I am the main driving factor. When you force me to respond to things I've already asked you not to do it cuts into that precious time and slows things down. And I'll reiterate, removing from testing *WILL* increase my workload. We've seen it from Ubuntu LTS's that had old buggy versions to Whonix and everywhere in between. Users refuse to use a flatpak and instead attempt to compile themselves and then require a ton of support. Which will be even more so if `apt get build-dep` isn't an option because it's been removed from testing. Regardless, you are going to do what you're going to do and I can not control that. But I am pleading with you to please not make my burnout (which has been mentioned in the release announcements which you claim to have read) any worse. [1] https://keep.imfreedom.org/grim/purple-spasm/file/default/README.md [2] https://salsa.debian.org/debian/hasl On Thu, Jan 8, 2026 at 11:27 AM Jeremy Bícha <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 > -- Thanks, Gary Kramlich <[email protected]>
