Pidgin usually stores passwords as plaintext. This plugin instead saves all passwords to the system keyring, which some would argue is a more secure form of password storage.
After the plugin is enabled, whenever an account with a pidgin-stored password signs on, its password will automatically be saved to the keyring and removed from the plaintext accounts.xml file.
The plugin is available as a ppa for Ubuntu: ppa:pidgin-gnome-keyring/ppa
You will need the libpurple and libsecret development libraries, along with
pkg-config. On Ubuntu, install these with
sudo apt-get install pkg-config libsecret-1-dev libpurple-dev
Afterwards, use git clone to download the source (the version is set by git),
and run make to compile. For installation:
- local ($HOME/.purple/plugins):
make install_local - global (/usr/lib/purple-2):
sudo make install