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Extended Buddy List Sort is a third party plugin for the popular Pidgin instant messenging client packaged with many Linux distributions.  It’s an awesome plugin that lets you use multiple criteria to sort through your buddy list as opposed to Pidgins default of one.

There are two pre-built packages, both Windows & Linux, however the Linux package seems to be built for a specific distribution. So I am going to show you how to compile it for your own system.  UPDATE: the creator of the plugin mentioned in the comments that the linux version is not distro specific.  However, in my experience you will need to modify the installation directories.

The test system is 64-bit Ubuntu Jaunty, so if you use another distro then you’ll have to modify accordingly.  To begin, you’ll need to install the Pidgin-Dev and Intltool packages.

sudo apt-get install pidgin-dev intltool

Next download the source package and extract it.  Then from within the folder type the following code to configure and install the plugin.  Modify as needed for your own system.

./configure –prefix=/usr –libdir=/usr/lib64 –localedir=/share/locale && make && sudo make install

The above code will install the plugin into /usr/lib64/pidgin where all my other Pidgin plugins are located, and then install the language file to /usr/share/locale

You’ll notice that the locale files default to the German (de) locale, but don’t worry about that, the configuration menu is still in English.  The creator just happens to be German.

Let the scripts do their thing, and at some point you may be asked to enter your password.  Do so and the files will install and put you right back to the command line.

So far so good. Fire up Pidgin and fIf you did everything right, you should see the plugin in your plugins list.  Enable it and configure it as needed.

And there you have it, easy as pie.  Enjoy, and hopefully my instructions were clear enough that you didn’t run into any problems.  Cheers!