Bug#559785: qutecom: embeds libpurple

[Ludovico Cavedon]

Michael Gilbert wrote:
> qutecom embeds libpurple, which makes security updates troublesome.
> please update the package to dynamically link to the system libpurple
> libraries. thanks.

I totally agree with that. They problem is the way qutecom uses
libpurple, and is not of easy solution without some cooperation from
libpurple upstream. Here is summary of the problem:

-in qutecom, when you logout and than login, libpurple is reinitialized
-reinitializing libpurple is supported in theory, but in practice nobody
 uses that and is buggy (i.e. would segfault)

I have been spending quite some time debugging and trying to get fixes
upstream.

Although, Pidgin core has been fixed [1], the problem is not solved
because some plugins does not reload correctly [2], [3].

The version of purple included does not have this problem because the
"bad" plugins are not loaded. Unfortunately, if qutecom used system
libpurple, it would not be able to prevent those plugins to get loaded.

However having this feature did not raise much interest in libpurple
upstream developers.

I'll try again to see if we can get these issues fixed.

Do you think it would make sense to open also bugs against the Debian
package of libpurple, or just upstream of libpurple?

Thank you,
Ludovico

[1] http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/7761
[2] http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/8758
[3] http://developer.pidgin.im/ticket/8770
[4] http://pidgin.im/pipermail/devel/2009-March/007800.html

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