Greetings Programs!
This post was supposed to be made awhile back but I got busy and kept forgetting to write it. Anyways, we are officially announcing that we will be releasing the first experimental release of Pidgin 3 on December 31st, 2024.
This release is a pre-alpha release and no one should be using it full time. The idea is to get something released as the idea of Pidgin 3 is at least 16 years old now.
This release will only include source code and a Flatpak. And we will probably use the Flathub Beta repository to release the Flatpak but that is still being debated.
We would prefer if packagers would hold up a bit as we are not yet ready to support the general public but if you want package it as an experimental release that should be fine.
Other notes about the release are as follows:
- This release will only support IRCv3, It’s rough but usable, but other protocols are coming in the future.
- The user interface has not been polished at all.
- It is completely incompatible with Pidgin 2 but is installable next to it.
- No existing Purple or Pidgin plugins will work with it and they will need to be ported to it as basically all of the API has changed.
- We have dropped Finch for the time being and it will not be part of this release and may never come back.
- And many many more things I can’t think of right now.
This release will have an official version of 2.90.0. This is because 3.0.0 will signify an API guarantee that we are not yet ready to make. That said, we will be following semantic/libtool versioning as we get closer to 3.0.0 final.
In the mean time, you can find a list of remaining open issues here.
We are also already planning a 3.0.0 Experimental 2 release and the issues for that can be found here.
If you are interested in helping get these releases out the door, you can check out our contributors guide or you can watch Pidgin 3 get built live on my Twitch.tv Channel.
