# HowTo: Add New Facebook Protocol Support to Pidgin/libpurple



## AntumDeluge (Jul 14, 2015)

_I plan to submit a new Port for this plugin._

Recently Facebook switched over to their new API and dumped the XMPP protocol that was previously used for communicating through Facebook Chat. This makes it impossible to use Pidgin Instant Messenger to communicate to Facebook friends. For those that would like to continue to use Pidgin with their Facebook account, a plugin has been created that adds the new Facebook protocol to Pidgin. It is called purple-facebook.

As of the time of this post the plugin is not available from the FreeBSD Ports collection or the binary packages repository (that I know of). So I wanted to share how to build the plugin and install it. Some simple instructions can be found on the GitHub project page. I have also created a blog post with added information on building and installing.

*Instructions for building on Unix-like systems:*

‣ Install the required build dependencies:

devel/glib20
devel/json-glib
net-im/libpurple
zlib (included in base system)
Using ports-mgmt/portupgrade:
`# portinstall glib json-glib libpurple`
Using ports-mgmt/portmaster
`# portmaster glib json-glib libpurple`
Using ports-mgmt/pkg:
`# pkg install glib json-glib libpurple`

‣ Get the latest source code from the GitHub project’s releases page.

‣ Extract the contents of the archive, open a command line/terminal and change to the directory of the extracted source code. If you downloaded the latest unstable version you will need to run the command `./autogen.sh`  from the source’s top directory to create a configure script and Makefile. If you downloaded a release version the configure script should already be available.

‣ Run the command `./configure` to generate the Makefile. If all dependencies are installed correctly there should be no errors.

‣ Run `make` to build the plugin files. If the plugin builds correctly you can execute `make install` which will install the files libfacebook.so and libfacebook.la to the directory /usr/local/lib/purple-2, or wherever the libpurple plugin directory is located on your system.


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## Rod Myers (Jul 14, 2015)

from the pidgin mail list, 

"Dropping support" doesn't necessarily mean "turning of the servers".

If you still want to use Facebook with Pidgin, try the new Facebook
plugin:

https://github.com/jgeboski/purple-facebook

People are having good luck with it, and it'll soon be shipped with
Pidgin by default.


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