README.commits
1 GLib is part of the GNOME git repository. At the current time, any 2 person with write access to the GNOME repository, can make changes to 3 GLib. This is a good thing, in that it encourages many people to work 4 on GLib, and progress can be made quickly. However, GLib is a fairly 5 large and complicated package that many other things depend on, so to 6 avoid unnecessary breakage, and to take advantage of the knowledge 7 about GLib that has been built up over the years, we'd like to ask 8 people committing to GLib to follow a few rules: 9 10 0) Ask first. If your changes are major, or could possibly break existing 11 code, you should always ask. If your change is minor and you've 12 been working on GLib for a while it probably isn't necessary 13 to ask. But when in doubt, ask. Even if your change is correct, 14 somebody may know a better way to do things. 15 16 If you are making changes to GLib, you should be subscribed 17 to gtk-devel-list (a] gnome.org. (Subscription address: 18 gtk-devel-list-request (a] gnome.org.) This is a good place to ask 19 about intended changes. 20 21 #gtk+ on GIMPNet (irc.gimp.org, irc.us.gimp.org, irc.eu.gimp.org, ...) 22 is also a good place to find GTK+ developers to discuss changes with, 23 however, email to gtk-devel-list is the most certain and preferred 24 method. 25 26 1) Ask _first_. 27 28 2) With git, we no longer maintain a ChangeLog file, but you are expected 29 to produce a meaningful commit message. Changes without a sufficient 30 commit message will be reverted. See below for the expected format 31 of commit messages. 32 33 Notes: 34 35 * When developing larger features or complicated bug fixes, it is 36 advisable to work in a branch in your own cloned GLib repository. 37 You may even consider making your repository publically available 38 so that others can easily test and review your changes. 39 40 * The expected format for git commit messages is as follows: 41 42 === begin example commit === 43 Short explanation of the commit 44 45 Longer explanation explaining exactly what's changed, whether any 46 external or private interfaces changed, what bugs were fixed (with bug 47 tracker reference if applicable) and so forth. Be concise but not too brief. 48 === end example commit === 49 50 - Always add a brief description of the commit to the _first_ line of 51 the commit and terminate by two newlines (it will work without the 52 second newline, but that is not nice for the interfaces). 53 54 - First line (the brief description) must only be one sentence and 55 should start with a capital letter unless it starts with a lowercase 56 symbol or identifier. Don't use a trailing period either. Don't exceed 57 72 characters. 58 59 - The main description (the body) is normal prose and should use normal 60 punctuation and capital letters where appropriate. Normally, for patches 61 sent to a mailing list it's copied from there. 62 63 - When committing code on behalf of others use the --author option, e.g. 64 git commit -a --author "Joe Coder <joe (a] coder.org>" and --signoff. 65 66 67 Owen Taylor 68 13 Aug 1998 69 17 Apr 2001 70 71 Matthias Clasen 72 31 Mar 2009 73
README.in
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
README.win32
1 Tor Lillqvist <tml (a] iki.fi> 2 Hans Breuer <hans (a] breuer.org> 3 4 The general parts, and the section about gcc and autoconfiscated build 5 are by Tor Lillqvist. The sections about MSVC build is by Hans Breuer. 6 7 General 8 ======= 9 10 For prebuilt binaries (DLLs and EXEs) and developer packages (headers, 11 import libraries) of GLib, Pango, GTK+ etc for Windows, go to 12 http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html . They are for "native" 13 Windows meaning they use the Win32 API and Microsoft C runtime library 14 only. No POSIX (Unix) emulation layer like Cygwin in involved. 15 16 To build GLib on Win32, you can use either gcc ("mingw") or the 17 Microsoft compiler and tools. For the latter, MSVC6 and later have 18 been used successfully. Also the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler have been 19 used. 20 21 People have also successfully cross-compiled GLib for Win32 from Linux 22 using the cross-mingw packages. 23 24 Note that to just *use* GLib on Windows, there is no need to build it 25 yourself. 26 27 On Windows setting up a correct build environment can be quite a task, 28 especially if you are used to just type "./configure; make" on Linux, 29 and expect things to work as smoothly on Windows. 30 31 The following preprocessor macros are to be used for conditional 32 compilation related to Win32 in GLib-using code: 33 34 - G_OS_WIN32 is defined when compiling for native Win32, without 35 any POSIX emulation, other than to the extent provided by the 36 bundled Microsoft C library (msvcr*.dll). 37 38 - G_WITH_CYGWIN is defined if compiling for the Cygwin 39 environment. Note that G_OS_WIN32 is *not* defined in that case, as 40 Cygwin is supposed to behave like Unix. G_OS_UNIX *is* defined by a GLib 41 for Cygwin. 42 43 - G_PLATFORM_WIN32 is defined when either G_OS_WIN32 or G_WITH_CYGWIN 44 is defined. 45 46 These macros are defined in glibconfig.h, and are thus available in 47 all source files that include <glib.h>. 48 49 Additionally, there are the compiler-specific macros: 50 - __GNUC__ is defined when using gcc 51 - _MSC_VER is defined when using the Microsoft compiler 52 - __DMC__ is defined when using the Digital Mars C/C++ compiler 53 54 G_OS_WIN32 implies using the Microsoft C runtime, normally 55 msvcrt.dll. GLib is not known to work with the older crtdll.dll 56 runtime, or the static Microsoft C runtime libraries libc.lib and 57 libcmt.lib. It apparently does work with the debugging version of 58 msvcrt.dll, msvcrtd.dll. If compiled with Microsoft compilers newer 59 than MSVC6, it also works with their compiler-specific runtimes, like 60 msvcr70.dll or msvcr80.dll. Please note that it's non totally clear if 61 you would be allowed by the license to distrubute a GLib linked to 62 msvcr70.dll or msvcr80.dll, as those are not part of the operating 63 system, but of the MSVC product. msvcrt.dll is part of Windows. 64 65 Building software that use GLib or GTK+ 66 ======================================= 67 68 Building software that just *uses* GLib or GTK+ also require to have 69 the right compiler set up the right way. If you intend to use gcc, 70 follow the relevant instructions below in that case, too. 71 72 Tor uses gcc with the -mms-bitfields flag which means that in order to 73 use the prebuilt DLLs (especially of GTK+), if you compile your code 74 with gcc, you *must* also use that flag. This flag means that the 75 struct layout rules are identical to those used by MSVC. This is 76 essential if the same DLLs are to be usable both from gcc- and 77 MSVC-compiled code. Such compatibility is desirable. 78 79 When using the prebuilt GLib DLLs that use msvcrt.dll from code that 80 uses other C runtimes like for example msvcr70.dll, one should note 81 that one cannot use such GLib API that take or returns file 82 descriptors. On Windows, a file descriptor (the small integer as 83 returned by open() and handled by related functions, and included in 84 the FILE struct) is an index into a table local to the C runtime 85 DLL. A file descriptor in one C runtime DLL does not have the same 86 meaning in another C runtime DLL. 87 88 Building GLib 89 ============= 90 91 Again, first decide whether you really want to do this. 92 93 Before building GLib you must also have a GNU gettext-runtime 94 developer package. Get prebuilt binaries of gettext-runtime from 95 http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html . 96 97 Autoconfiscated build (with gcc) 98 ================================ 99 100 Tor uses gcc 3.4.5 and the rest of the mingw utilities, including MSYS 101 from www.mingw.org. Somewhat earlier or later versions of gcc 102 presumably also work fine. 103 104 Using Cygwin's gcc with the -mno-cygwin switch is not recommended. In 105 theory it should work, but Tor hasn't tested that lately. It can 106 easily lead to confusing situations where one mixes headers for Cygwin 107 from /usr/include with the headers for native software one really 108 should use. Ditto for libraries. 109 110 If you want to use mingw's gcc, install gcc, win32api, binutils and 111 MSYS from www.mingw.org. 112 113 Tor invokes configure using: 114 115 CC='gcc -mtune=pentium3 -mthreads' CPPFLAGS='-I/opt/gnu/include' \ 116 LDFLAGS='-L/opt/gnu/lib -Wl,--enable-auto-image-base' CFLAGS=-O2 \ 117 ./configure --disable-gtk-doc --prefix=$TARGET 118 119 The /opt/gnu mentioned contains the header files for GNU and (import) 120 libraries for GNU libintl. The build scripts used to produce the 121 prebuilt binaries are included in the "dev" packages. 122 123 Please note that the ./configure mechanism should not blindly be used 124 to build a GLib to be distributed to other developers because it 125 produces a compiler-dependent glibconfig.h. For instance, the typedef 126 for gint64 is long long with gcc, but __int64 with MSVC. 127 128 Except for this and a few other minor issues, there shouldn't be any 129 reason to distribute separate GLib headers and DLLs for gcc and MSVC6 130 users, as the compilers generate code that uses the same C runtime 131 library. 132 133 The DLL generated by either compiler is binary compatible with the 134 other one. Thus one either has to manually edit glibconfig.h 135 afterwards, or use the supplied glibconfig.h.win32 which has been 136 produced by running configure twice, once using gcc and once using 137 MSVC, and merging the resulting files with diff -D. 138 139 For MSVC7 and later (Visual C++ .NET 2003, Visual C++ 2005, Visual C++ 140 2008 etc) it is preferred to use specific builds of GLib DLLs that use 141 the same C runtime as the code that uses GLib. Such DLLs should be 142 named differently than the ones that use msvcrt.dll. 143 144 For GLib, the DLL is called libglib-2.0-0.dll, and the import 145 libraries libglib-2.0.dll.a and glib-2.0.lib. Note that the "2.0" is 146 part of the "basename" of the library, it is not something that 147 libtool has added. The -0 suffix is added by libtool and is the value 148 of "LT_CURRENT - LT_AGE". The 0 is *not* part of the version number of 149 GLib, although, for GLib 2.x.0, it happens to be the same. The 150 LT_CURRENT - LT_AGE value will on purpose be kept as zero as long as 151 binary compatibility is maintained. For the gory details, see 152 configure.in and libtool documentation. 153 154 Cross-compiling 155 =============== 156 157 It is possible to build GLib using a cross compiler. See 158 docs/reference/glib/html/glib-cross-compiling.html (part of the GLib 159 reference manual) for more information. 160 161 Building with MSVC 162 ================== 163 164 If you are building from a SVN snapshot, you will not have any 165 makefile.msc files. You should copy the corresponding makefile.msc.in 166 file to that name, and replace any @...@ strings with the correct 167 value. 168 169 This is done automatically when an official GLib source distribution 170 package is built, so if you get GLib from a source distribution 171 package, there should be makefile.msc files ready to use (after some 172 editing). 173 174 The hand-written makefile.msc files, and the stuff in the "build" 175 subdirectory, produce DLLs and import libraries that match what the 176 so-called autoconfiscated build produces. 177 178 All the MSVC makefiles are for the command line build with nmake. If 179 you want to use the VC-UI you can simply create wrapper .dsp makefiles 180 (read the VC docs how to do so). 181 182 Some modules may require Perl to auto-generate files. The goal (at 183 least Hans's) is to not require any more tools. 184 185 Build with: 186 187 nmake -f makefile.msc 188 or 189 nmake -f makefile.msc DEBUG=1 190 191 [ 192 The former will create 'release' versions of the DLLs. If you 193 plan to distribute you DLLs please use this command. The latter 194 will create DLLs with debug information _and_ link them with 195 msvcrtd.dll instead of msvcrt.dll. 196 Beware: There are known problems with mixing DLLs in one 197 application, which are build against different runtimes. 198 Especially the index-to-file mapping used by 'unix-style' file 199 operation - _open() _pipe() etc. - breaks sometimes in strange 200 ways (for example the Gimp plug-in communication). 201 ] 202 203 Required libraries (not build from svn) 204 ------------------ 205 libintl (gnu-intl), 206 207 are available pre-built from the website mentioned above. 208 209 Versioning 210 ---------- 211 Instead of the Unix and auto* way of tracking versions and resolving 212 dependencies (configure; make; make install) involving autoconf, 213 automake, libtool and friends the MSVC build uses a different 214 approach. 215 216 The core of it's versioning is the file build/win32/module.defs. 217 It contains entries of the form MODULE_VER, e.g.: 218 219 GLIB_VER = 2.0 220 LIBICONV_VER = 1.3 221 222 and the placement of these modules defined as MODULE, e.g.: 223 224 GLIB = $(TOP)/glib 225 LIBICONV = $(TOP)/libiconv-$(LIBICONV_VER) 226 227 whereas TOP is defined as the relative path from the respective 228 module directory to your top build directory. Every makefile.msc 229 needs to define TOP before including the common make file part 230 make.msc, which than includes module.defs, like: 231 232 TOP = ../.. 233 !INCLUDE $(TOP)/glib/build/win32/make.msc 234 235 (Taken from gtk+/gdk/makefile.msc) 236 237 With this provision it is possible to create almost placement 238 independent makefiles without requiring to 'install' the libraries and 239 headers into a common place (as it is done on Unix, and as Tor does 240 when producing his zipfiles with prebuilt GLib, GTK+ etc). 241 242 Special Files 243 ------------- 244 config.h.win32.in : @XXX_MAJOR_VERSION@ needs to be replaced by 245 the current version/build number. The resulting file is to be saved 246 as 'config.h.win32'. This should be automatically done if a package 247 gets build on the Unix platform. 248 249 makefile.msc.in : @XXX_MAJOR_VERSION@ to be replaced. Save as 250 makefile.msc. 251 252 <module>.def : every function which should be used from the outside of 253 a dll needs to be marked for 'export'. It is common that one needs to change 254 these files after some api changes occured. If there are variables to be 255 exported another mechanism is needed, like : 256 257 #ifdef G_OS_WIN32 258 # ifdef GDK_COMPILATION 259 # define GDKVAR __declspec(dllexport) 260 # else 261 # define GDKVAR extern __declspec(dllimport) 262 # endif 263 #else 264 # define GDKVAR extern 265 #endif 266 267 268 269 Directory Structure 270 ------------------- 271 all modules should be build in a common directory tree otherwise you 272 need to adapt the file 'module.defs'. They are listed here in increasing 273 dependencies order. 274 275 <common rootdir without spaces> 276 | 277 +- glib 278 | | 279 | +- build : [this module lives in the SVN root dir] 280 | | +- win32 281 | | .\module.defs : defines (relative) locations of the headers 282 | | and libs and version numbers to be include 283 | | in dll names 284 | | .\make.msc : include by almost every 'makefile.msc' 285 | | 286 | | .\README.WIN32 : more information how to build 287 | | .\glibconfig.h.win32.in : similar to config.h.win32.in 288 | | .\makefile.msc : master makefile, sub dir makefiles should work 289 | | 290 | +- glib 291 | +- gmodule 292 | +- gthread : does _not_ depend on pthread anymore 293 | +- gobject 294 | 295 +- pango 296 | +- pango : 'native' build does not require extra libs and 297 | | includes the minimal required text renderer 298 | | (there is also a currently slightly broken FreeType2 299 | | based implementation for win32) 300 | +- modules (not yet build) 301 | 302 +- atk 303 | +- atk 304 | .\makefile.msc : build here 305 | 306 +- gtk+ 307 | | .\config.h.win32 : for all the below 308 | | 309 | +- gdk-pixbuf 310 | | .\gdk_pixbuf.rc.in : version resource for the DLLs. Needs 311 | | to be converted (filled with version info) 312 | | as described above. 313 | | 314 | +- gdk 315 | | | .\makefile.msc : some auto-generation is needed to build in the 316 | | | in the subdirectory 317 | | +- win32 318 | | 319 | +- gtk 320 321 | 322 +- gimp 323 | .\makefile.msc : master makefile to build The Gimp. The makefiles 324 | from the sub dirs should work stand alone, but than 325 | the user needs to know the build order 326 327 | 328 +- dia : additionally depends on libart_lgpl (in SVN) 329 | and libxml2 ( see http://www.xmlsoft.org/ ) 330 +- lib 331 +- app 332 +- objects 333 +- plug-ins 334 +- python 335 336
