Empathy is split in different processes: - src/empathy: contact list, considered as the main UI - src/empathy-chat: chat UI - src/empathy-call: call UI - src/empathy-accounts: UI to configure IM accounts - src/empathy-debugger: debug tool Each process can be run directly from source without having to be installed to its prefix. You just have to define the environment variable EMPATHY_SRCDIR to the path of your empathy source dir. For example: export EMPATHY_SRCDIR=/home/cassidy/gnome/empathy The chat and call UI are automatically started by telepathy-mission-control when receiving or requesting a chat/call. In order to use your custom version you have to kill any existing instance of empathy-{chat,call} and then start it with EMPATHY_PERSIST=1 to prevent it from auto exiting if there is no channel to handle. For example: EMPATHY_PERSIST=1 ./src/empathy-chat Debugging can be turned on using EMPATHY_DEBUG=all and logged to a file with EMPATHY_LOGFILE=/tmp/empathy.log See http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/ about coding style conventions. See also http://live.gnome.org/Empathy/Git to read about our git workflow.