1 General Information 2 =================== 3 4 This is GLib version @GLIB_VERSION@. GLib is the low-level core 5 library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK+ and GNOME. It 6 provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and 7 interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads, 8 dynamic loading, and an object system. 9 10 The official ftp site is: 11 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/glib 12 13 The official web site is: 14 http://www.gtk.org/ 15 16 Information about mailing lists can be found at 17 http://www.gtk.org/mailinglists.html 18 19 To subscribe: mail -s subscribe gtk-list-request (a] gnome.org < /dev/null 20 (Send mail to gtk-list-request (a] gnome.org with the subject "subscribe") 21 22 Installation 23 ============ 24 25 See the file 'INSTALL' 26 27 Notes about GLib 2.20 28 ===================== 29 30 ^ The functions for launching applications (e.g. g_app_info_launch() + 31 friends) now passes a FUSE file:// URI if possible (requires gvfs 32 with the FUSE daemon to be running and operational). With gvfs 2.26, 33 FUSE file:// URIs will be mapped back to gio URIs in the GFile 34 constructors. The intent of this change is to better integrate 35 POSIX-only applications, see bug #528670 for the rationale. The 36 only user-visible change is when an application needs to examine an 37 URI passed to it (e.g. as a positional parameter). Instead of 38 looking at the given URI, the application will now need to look at 39 the result of g_file_get_uri() after having constructed a GFile 40 object with the given URI. 41 42 Notes about GLib 2.18 43 ===================== 44 45 * The recommended way of using GLib has always been to only include the 46 toplevel headers glib.h, glib-object.h and gio.h. GLib enforces this by 47 generating an error when individual headers are directly included. 48 To help with the transition, the enforcement is not turned on by 49 default for GLib headers (it is turned on for GObject and GIO). 50 To turn it on, define the preprocessor symbol G_DISABLE_SINGLE_INCLUDES. 51 52 Notes about GLib 2.16 53 ===================== 54 55 * GLib now includes GIO, which adds optional dependencies against libattr 56 and libselinux for extended attribute and SELinux support. Use 57 --disable-xattr and --disable-selinux to build without these. 58 59 Notes about GLib 2.10 60 ===================== 61 62 * The functions g_snprintf() and g_vsnprintf() have been removed from 63 the gprintf.h header, since they are already declared in glib.h. This 64 doesn't break documented use of gprintf.h, but people have been known 65 to include gprintf.h without including glib.h. 66 67 * The Unicode support has been updated to Unicode 4.1. This adds several 68 new members to the GUnicodeBreakType enumeration. 69 70 * The support for Solaris threads has been retired. Solaris has provided 71 POSIX threads for long enough now to have them available on every 72 Solaris platform. 73 74 * 'make check' has been changed to validate translations by calling 75 msgfmt with the -c option. As a result, it may fail on systems with 76 older gettext implementations (GNU gettext < 0.14.1, or Solaris gettext). 77 'make check' will also fail on systems where the C compiler does not 78 support ELF visibility attributes. 79 80 * The GMemChunk API has been deprecated in favour of a new 'slice 81 allocator'. See the g_slice documentation for more details. 82 83 * A new type, GInitiallyUnowned, has been introduced, which is 84 intended to serve as a common implementation of the 'floating reference' 85 concept that is e.g. used by GtkObject. Note that changing the 86 inheritance hierarchy of a type can cause problems for language 87 bindings and other code which needs to work closely with the type 88 system. Therefore, switching to GInitiallyUnowned should be done 89 carefully. g_object_compat_control() has been added to GLib 2.8.5 90 to help with the transition. 91 92 Notes about GLib 2.6.0 93 ====================== 94 95 * GLib 2.6 introduces the concept of 'GLib filename encoding', which is the 96 on-disk encoding on Unix, but UTF-8 on Windows. All GLib functions 97 returning or accepting pathnames have been changed to expect 98 filenames in this encoding, and the common POSIX functions dealing 99 with pathnames have been wrapped. These wrappers are declared in the 100 header <glib/gstdio.h> which must be included explicitly; it is not 101 included through <glib.h>. 102 103 On current (NT-based) Windows versions, where the on-disk file names 104 are Unicode, these wrappers use the wide-character API in the C 105 library. Thus applications can handle file names containing any 106 Unicode characters through GLib's own API and its POSIX wrappers, 107 not just file names restricted to characters in the system codepage. 108 109 To keep binary compatibility with applications compiled against 110 older versions of GLib, the Windows DLL still provides entry points 111 with the old semantics using the old names, and applications 112 compiled against GLib 2.6 will actually use new names for the 113 functions. This is transparent to the programmer. 114 115 When compiling against GLib 2.6, applications intended to be 116 portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into 117 consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose 118 names have been constructed from strings returned from GLib. 119 120 * Likewise, g_get_user_name() and g_get_real_name() have been changed 121 to return UTF-8 on Windows, while keeping the old semantics for 122 applications compiled against older versions of GLib. 123 124 * The GLib uses an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that 125 must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning 126 with prefixes such as _g will be exported from the library, on others not. 127 In no case can applications use these private symbols. In addition to that, 128 GLib+ 2.6 makes several symbols private which were not in any installed 129 header files and were never intended to be exported. 130 131 * To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GLib, when compiled 132 with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry 133 points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with 134 IA__, may be seen when debugging a GLib program. 135 136 * On Windows, GLib no longer opens a console window when printing 137 warning messages if stdout or stderr are invalid, as they are in 138 "Windows subsystem" (GUI) applications. Simply redirect stdout or 139 stderr if you need to see them. 140 141 * The child watch functionality tends to reveal a bug in many 142 thread implementations (in particular the older LinuxThreads 143 implementation on Linux) where it's not possible to call waitpid() 144 for a child created in a different thread. For this reason, for 145 maximum portability, you should structure your code to fork all 146 child processes that you want to wait for from the main thread. 147 148 * A problem was recently discovered with g_signal_connect_object(); 149 it doesn't actually disconnect the signal handler once the object being 150 connected to dies, just disables it. See the API docs for the function 151 for further details and the correct workaround that will continue to 152 work with future versions of GLib. 153 154 How to report bugs 155 ================== 156 157 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system. 158 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product glib.) You will need 159 to create an account for yourself. 160 161 In the bug report please include: 162 163 * Information about your system. For instance: 164 165 - What operating system and version 166 - For Linux, what version of the C library 167 168 And anything else you think is relevant. 169 170 * How to reproduce the bug. 171 172 If you can reproduce it with one of the test programs that are built 173 in the tests/ subdirectory, that will be most convenient. Otherwise, 174 please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. 175 As a last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece 176 of software that can be downloaded. 177 178 * If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out 179 when the crash occured. 180 181 * Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but 182 is not necessary. 183 184 Patches 185 ======= 186 187 Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the 188 patch fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment 189 to that bug report. 190 191 Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, 192 and attach the patch to that bug report. 193 194 Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword 195 in their keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GLib 196 programming interface, the API keyword should also be included. 197 198 Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU 199 diff.) 200
