Pidgin Directory Prefs?

[deadly7]

First off, I'm aware there's an official pidgin developer website that I could ask this question at instead. I'm also aware they're all huge needledicks, so I try to avoid asking things there.

Now, for the important part: I'll be very shortly [as soon as my laptop comes back] reinstall with Win7/Slackware. I intend to install Pigdin on both partitions, but I don't want to deal with having to boot into two different OSes just to keep secure backups of everything. Is there a way to change the Pidgin source in such a way that you can specify a different drive path as opposed to %APPDATA%\Pidgin ? I'd like to have both my Windows & Slackware installs point to that directory and read/write/execute freely.

[rabbit]

I remember doing this before on my XP/Fedora box without changing source at all, but I don't remember exactly how.  I also haven't had to deal with it so I haven't tried to remember.  I'll try to see how I did it, though.

[iago]

Yeah, I know it's possible but I can't think of how. You can try setting the $HOME environmental variable when you run pidgin:
$ HOME=/blah pidgin

If that doesn't work, then an easy solution is to use a symbolic link on Linux:
$ ln -s /mnt/windows/...../pidgin /home/you/.pidgin

[Joe]

If that doesn't work, then an easy solution is to use a symbolic link on Linux:
$ ln -s /mnt/windows/...../pidgin /home/you/.pidgin

The perfect solution for just about everything.

[deadly7]

Yeah, I know it's possible but I can't think of how. You can try setting the $HOME environmental variable when you run pidgin:
$ HOME=/blah pidgin

If that doesn't work, then an easy solution is to use a symbolic link on Linux:
$ ln -s /mnt/windows/...../pidgin /home/you/.pidgin

When I run pidgin would I have to specify the environment every time? I've been Googling but to no avail, so I'm at a loss.

The perfect solution for just about everything.

Certainly not very useful for me here. I'm going to have an accessible filespace for both Windows/Slackware to r,w,x and I don't want to have to manage both individual filesystems when I do stuff. So symlinks wouldn't be super helpful for me, if I understand them right.

[iago]

Yeah, I know it's possible but I can't think of how. You can try setting the $HOME environmental variable when you run pidgin:
$ HOME=/blah pidgin

If that doesn't work, then an easy solution is to use a symbolic link on Linux:
$ ln -s /mnt/windows/...../pidgin /home/you/.pidgin

When I run pidgin would I have to specify the environment every time? I've been Googling but to no avail, so I'm at a loss.

You'd have to put it in the shortcut or whatever when you run it, yet. I'm not positive that pidgin respects $HOME, though, so you'd have to test it.

The perfect solution for just about everything.

Certainly not very useful for me here. I'm going to have an accessible filespace for both Windows/Slackware to r,w,x and I don't want to have to manage both individual filesystems when I do stuff. So symlinks wouldn't be super helpful for me, if I understand them right.

A symlink will definitely work from the Linux side, because you can point your config folder wherever you want. I know Windows has some kind of symlink concept as well (I think they call them "junctions"?), but I'm not sure if they can go to different drives.

Worst case, you could mount your Windows NTFS drive read/write from Linux and use the Windows drive directly. It's less than ideal, but it'd likely work.

[while1]

Aye, this link kind shows you a general gist of what you can do, as iago has mentioned:

http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/15053/sync-your-pidgin-profile-across-multiple-pcs-with-dropbox/

Just ignore the use of the service "Dropbox", as it's unnecessary to use something like this.  The link is more so to give you an idea of how you can use WinXP junctions and symbolic links.

IIRC, Win7 and Vista have real symbolic links that work like they do in linux, not just the shitty junctions WinXP offers.

[Chavo]

There is a portable version of pidgin that should already have a modification similar to this.

edit: http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/pidgin_portable

[Joe]

I remember having a problem symlinking because my UNIX drive and Windows drive were different partitions or something. It turned out to be politics and I had to do a different type of linking or something. I can't remember.

[while1]

I remember having a problem symlinking because my UNIX drive and Windows drive were different partitions or something. It turned out to be politics and I had to do a different type of linking or something. I can't remember.

Most likely it's because your Windows drive was NTFS and your UNIX ext2/3.

[iago]

I remember having a problem symlinking because my UNIX drive and Windows drive were different partitions or something. It turned out to be politics and I had to do a different type of linking or something. I can't remember.

Hard links (ln) have to be on the same partition, and soft links (ln -s) can be on different ones. A hard link is basically another way to access the file, the same in every way (you can't even tell it's a hardlink unless you look at the node count), whereas a software is just a pointer that can point anywhere (even to places that don't exist).

I always use ln -s unless there's some compelling reason not to.