View source for Slack with Pidgin via slack-libpurple

[https://pidgin.im/ Pidgin] is a cross platform chat program that works with many chat networks and protocols - Google Hangouts, ICQ, XMPP, etc.


Slack initially supported the standard XMPP protocol but decided to disable this handy feature in May 2018 and became yet another closed ecosystem. 


If you wish to still access it via 3rd party pidgin client, slack-libpurple is one available plugin to do so. Here lies some basic instructions on how to do so on Linux, which is Ubuntu 16 at the time of writing.

* https://github.com/dylex/slack-libpurple
* https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/201727913-Connect-to-Slack-over-IRC-and-XMPP


Install required packages
 apt-get install build-essential git libpurple-dev pkg-config



Download, compile, install. Doing so as my user, hence make install-user
 cd /tmp/
 git clone https://github.com/dylex/slack-libpurple
 cd slack-libpurple
 make
 make install-user


This plugin requires an API token for auth. Go here and create one, it should be 70ish characters long:
* https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens

Finally, open Pidgin, go to Accounts-> Manage-> Add


Basic tab: 
* Protocol: Slack
* Username: <your slack username>
* Host: yourworkspace.slack.com


Advanced tab:
* API Token: <xoxp-blahhhhhasdfas1231241niner> 
* I checked all other options (Open chat on message, Retrieve history, Download Avatars) and they seem to work fine.