After Callum let me know that the Linux binary of the character counting plugin for Pidgin worked on Fedora 8, I decided to spin a RPM built on Fedora 8 proper. After a bit of reading and hackery, I have produced a x86 RPM for Fedora 8. Here’s the source, which includes the patch and the .spec file, as well as the RPM:
I’ve also spun a new Debian binary, as well:
And, if you’re looking for the Win32 binary, you can still get it off this page.
I’m glad so many of you out there who use Pidgin find this plugin useful. Thanks for all the positive feedback.
Tags: Pidgin, Twitter, Fedora 8, RPM, Debian
Programmer, husband, father, singer, guitarist, tinkerer, reverse engineer, strange, and living in New Jersey. 
I took the time to download the source and compile it to run on Fedora 16 x86_64, with pidgin 2.10.3 installed from source too, using /usr/lib64. Default install for pidgin 2.10.3 from source would have it use /usr/lib instead. If you wish, I can send you the RPM package to host. I only had to make some changes to the SPEC file to give a version for Pidgin itself, and right now don’t know how to make it check the version of the source-installed Pidgin so it won’t give errors during installation that it’s not installed.
To both Andrew Vineyard and Dossy:
I would love to get a version of the character counter that works for Fedora 17. I am very new to Linux and do not have the mental fortitude or the digital skills to figure out how to compile things from the source in order to get them to work on a new version of Linux. The original RPM for Fedora 8 insists that it installed, but I have no idea how or where. The character counter has been a godsend on my Windows machine, and I was hoping for similar capability on the Fedora computer.
Mark, are you using 32-bit (i386) or 64-bit (x86_64) Linux? You can find out by executing “uname -m” from a terminal window. I only posted a i386 RPM — if you’re on x86_64, you’ll either need to DIY, or maybe I can build an updated pair of RPMs.
I am using an x86_64 version of Fedora 17. I would appreciate both an i386 version and a x64-64 version – or the instructions on how one makes such. I am planning on gifting parts of this computer out in a rebuilt machine using either Zorin OS or Fedora 17. (Fedora mainly because it works well for the most part. Zorin because it looks similar to Windows. I may end up doing it up as a dual build.) Any assistance would be greatly appreciated at this point.
I decided to spin up a build for Fedora 17. Give this a try, and let me know if it works for you:
pidgin-convcharcount-plugin-2.4.1-2.fc17.x86_64.rpm
I am trying it out now, Dossy. I believe that this is going to be “the lick.” I just found the feature after installing the *.RPM file, and there’s been no crashes yet.
That’s great news, Mark!