Using Pidgin via Perl: undefined symbol:g_free

Question

Pidgin, the generic IM client allows us to interact with it using Perl.

I downloaded the source of Pidgin 2.7.10, built it. Pidgin itself works.

Then I tried to load the Purple module using

perl -MPurple -e1

but got the following error:

perl -MPurple -e1
Can't load '/opt/pidgin/lib/purple-2/perl//auto/Purple/Purple.so' 
for module Purple:
/opt/pidgin/lib/purple-2/perl//auto/Purple/Purple.so: undefined symbol:g_free 
at /home/gabor/perl5/lib/perl5/x86_64-linux-thread-multi/XSLoader.pm line 70.
at /opt/pidgin/lib/purple-2/perl//Purple.pm line 52

Running on SuSE Linux:

Linux myhost 2.6.27.19-5-default #1 SMP 2009-02-28 04:40:21 +0100 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Has anyone encountered this issue? How to solve it?

Answer 1

Sorry for answering an old question. Had the same problem last night. Turns out you just need to put your Perl script to ~/.purple/plugins/ . Make sure it ends with *.pl. Upon restarting, Pidgin/Finch will handle loading this script and list the plugin in the Plugins dialog box.

So in other words, you are not supposed to test this script from the command line.

See http://developer.pidgin.im/doxygen/dev/html/perl-howto.html for more details.

Answer 2

I suggest you just install perl-Purple:

sudo zypper install perl-Purple

This may work, however I have personally had no experience with SuSe (I use Fedora, myself).