Recently I decided I need to upgrade to Pidgin 2.5.5 on my Ubuntu install. Oh what fun that was!
Basically after removing my old Pidgin install with the command
sudo apt-get remove pidgin
Then downloading Pidgin from here:Â http://www.pidgin.im/download/
And then unpacking, and running this from the unpacked directory:
sudo ./configure
I found out I didn’t have all the packages needed for install.
So here is what I did. Ran this from the help FAQ
sudo apt-get build-dep pidgin
But this (as noted) found I had no source files found, then I had to do a massive update to compile all the source packages by going to “Software Sources” control panel in System -> Administration which has some boxes checking the unchecked source.
After that update, the ./configure command worked.  Then I did:
make
make check
make install
After all that, Pidgin installed; but, Pidgin didn’t work !! errgh.
Seems Pidgin could not find libpurple.so.0
So after some digging, here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=491673
These commands did the trick:
cd /usr/lib
sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/libpurple.so.0 .
(don’t forget the period at the end of the above line)
Once I did that finally I had the latest Pidgin! Took a lot more than it should, hopefully soon ” sudo apt-get install pidgin ” will yield the latest 2.5.5 build for Ubuntu users.
~J