raymand211092 / purple-plugin-delta-2

Delta Chat plugin for libpurple

Overview

Delta Chat is an instant messaging application based on email - which is to say, SMTP+IMAP.

It doesn't have its own desktop application at present, but it does have a core protocol library. Wrapping this in a libpurple plugin will allow existing desktop applications such as Pidgin to interoperate.

Build

Very basic instructions at present. First, deltachat-core isn't packaged, so you'll need to build and install it according to these instructions.

Now, you'll need some other build dependencies:

sudo apt install build-essential libpurple-dev libcurl4-openssl-dev libglib2.0-dev

Finally, run make to create a libdelta.so file.

Use

The easiest way to use this is to copy the libdelta.so file into ~/.purple/plugins. When running pidgin, you'll now have the option to add a "Delta Chat" account.

If it doesn't show up, chances are pidgin can't find the various shared libraries the .so depends on. You can run ldd ~/.purple/plugins/libdelta.so to confirm. I'll document fixing this after the build and install system is settled.

At present, the "Username" and "Password" account fields correspond to email address and password, respectively. Many important settings also show up on the "Advanced" tab - if left blank, the plugin will attempt to automatically detect the correct values, but you may need to fill some of them in manually to get the connection to work.

Run pidgin with --debug to see interesting output.

Limitations

There's no facility at present to import account keys, so sharing an email address between your mobile and desktop isn't amazing. It's high on the agenda.