Installing pidgin-guifications problem

[Aaron_H]

Hi all,

I just installed Fedora 8 today, I'm somewhat new to Linux (I have played around with it before, in older versions of Red Hat however.) so forgive me if this is a dumb question.

I'm trying to install a plugin for Pidgin (called pidgin-guifications, from: Pidgin Plugins - Trac), but it needs "building" and I'm not totally sure how to do this.

I ran the config file (by double clicking it), but I don't know how to "make" the installation (or infact how to run the config file through the terminal, which would help)..

I am familiar with the su command (so I understood the last part of the install-readme), but I need a complete step by step guide to install it..

Once I've been told how to install this, I should have no problems with other programs that need "building"..

my home directory is: /home/Aaron
and the tar.gz is in: /home/Aaron/Desktop
(I can unzip this either with the terminal or through GNOME) giving: /home/Aaron/Desktop/pidgin-guifications-2.16

Regards,
Aaron.

[Aaron_H]

Okay, I worked out how to run the configure script from the terminal (./configure - can someone please tell me why there's the ./, rather than just typing configure. EDIT: I just read it's because Linux doesn't look in the current directory for executables - Why is this?).

It gave me an error message saying an XML Parser for Perl was missing. So I googled and installed this. Ran configure again and got this error message:

checking for PIDGIN... configure: error: Package requirements (pidgin purple) were not met:

No package 'pidgin' found
No package 'purple' found

Consider adjusting the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable if you
installed software in a non-standard prefix.

Alternatively, you may set the environment variables PIDGIN_CFLAGS
and PIDGIN_LIBS to avoid the need to call pkg-config.
See the pkg-config man page for more details.

The install text file says:

Next run the configure script. If you have installed Pidgin and it's headers
in the standard location, then configure should find the Pidgin source. If not,
you need to set the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH to point to the
directory containing pidgin.pc before running configure. You should configure
with the same prefix was used for Pidgin (for packages this would be /usr), eg:

PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --prefix=/usr

I have no clue what I'm supposed to type in the terminal. I tried using "whereis pidgin" to give me some idea.. but I still don't know what to put in place of the install file's example.

[root@localhost pidgin-guifications-2.16]# whereis pidginpidgin: /usr/bin/pidgin /usr/lib/pidgin /usr/share/man/man1/pidgin.1.gz

Any help would be appreciated.
- Aaron

[lsatenstein]

In linux as in other operating systems, there is an execution path. Linux never puts the current directory into the execution path.

The path statement is a list of (folders / directories) to search, interpreting the path from left to right.

Why is the home directory not in the path? For security. that is why.

Generally when we download a file or uncompress files which are executables, the are put in the users home directory or the Desktop directory. If execution was allowed, the danger is that a downloaded executable may be a virus program. So, naming the executable in the home directory by typing its name would not allow it to start.
However, by explicitly providing the path to it via the ./ serves as a signal that it is ok to execute said program. (Provided the execution bits are properly set.)

[Aaron_H]

Thanks for explaining that. I understand why I couldn't run the configure script now.

Do you have any ideas what I should put in for
PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig ./configure --prefix=/usr

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to put pidgins directory, or the directory or something else. It means nothing to me, and google keeps throwing up the same example.

Edit: I did a whereis pkgconfig, whereis purple, and whereis pidgin.
The results were:

pkgconfig: /usr/lib/pkgconfig /usr/share/pkgconfig

pidgin: /usr/bin/pidgin /usr/lib/pidgin /usr/share/man/man1/pidgin.1.gz

purple: /etc/purple /usr/share/purple

and tried each of these directories in place of /usr/local/lib/pkgconfig in the PKG_CONFIG_PATH, but nothing seemed to work.

I don't understand it, I managed to install Icebreaker from source and all of it's dependencies without having to edit any of this PKG_CONFIG_PATH stuff.

[Aaron_H]

Sorry for the double post, but I've still not solved the problem so any help would be appreciated.

[pjacob]

Sorry for the double post, but I've still not solved the problem so any help would be appreciated.

Not sure if this is already fixed for you, but installing the pidgin-devel package solved the problem for me.

sudo yum install pidgin-devel

Take care!