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This is GLib version 2.12.12. GLib is the low-level core
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library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK+ and GNOME. It
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provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and
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interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads,
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dynamic loading, and an object system.
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The official ftp site is:
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ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk
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The official web site is:
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Information about mailing lists can be found at
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http://www.gtk.org/mailinglists.html
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To subscribe: mail -s subscribe gtk-list-request@gnome.org < /dev/null
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(Send mail to gtk-list-request@gnome.org with the subject "subscribe")
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See the file 'INSTALL'
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* The functions g_snprintf() and g_vsnprintf() have been removed from
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the gprintf.h header, since they are already declared in glib.h. This
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doesn't break documented use of gprintf.h, but people have been known
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to include gprintf.h without including glib.h.
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* The Unicode support has been updated to Unicode 4.1. This adds several
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new members to the GUnicodeBreakType enumeration.
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* The support for Solaris threads has been retired. Solaris has provided
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POSIX threads for long enough now to have them available on every
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* 'make check' has been changed to validate translations by calling
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msgfmt with the -c option. As a result, it may fail on systems with
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older gettext implementations (GNU gettext < 0.14.1, or Solaris gettext).
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'make check' will also fail on systems where the C compiler does not
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support ELF visibility attributes.
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* The GMemChunk API has been deprecated in favour of a new 'slice
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allocator'. See the g_slice documentation for more details.
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* A new type, GInitiallyUnowned, has been introduced, which is
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intended to serve as a common implementation of the 'floating reference'
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concept that is e.g. used by GtkObject. Note that changing the
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inheritance hierarchy of a type can cause problems for language
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bindings and other code which needs to work closely with the type
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system. Therefore, switching to GInitiallyUnowned should be done
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carefully. g_object_compat_control() has been added to GLib 2.8.5
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to help with the transition.
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Notes about GLib 2.6.0
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======================
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* GLib 2.6 introduces the concept of 'GLib filename encoding', which is the
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on-disk encoding on Unix, but UTF-8 on Windows. All GLib functions
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returning or accepting pathnames have been changed to expect
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filenames in this encoding, and the common POSIX functions dealing
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with pathnames have been wrapped. These wrappers are declared in the
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header <glib/gstdio.h> which must be included explicitly; it is not
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included through <glib.h>.
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On current (NT-based) Windows versions, where the on-disk file names
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are Unicode, these wrappers use the wide-character API in the C
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library. Thus applications can handle file names containing any
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Unicode characters through GLib's own API and its POSIX wrappers,
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not just file names restricted to characters in the system codepage.
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To keep binary compatibility with applications compiled against
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older versions of GLib, the Windows DLL still provides entry points
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with the old semantics using the old names, and applications
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compiled against GLib 2.6 will actually use new names for the
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functions. This is transparent to the programmer.
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When compiling against GLib 2.6, applications intended to be
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portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
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consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
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names have been constructed from strings returned from GLib.
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* Likewise, g_get_user_name() and g_get_real_name() have been changed
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to return UTF-8 on Windows, while keeping the old semantics for
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applications compiled against older versions of GLib.
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* The GLib uses an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
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must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
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with prefixes such as _g will be exported from the library, on others not.
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In no case can applications use these private symbols. In addition to that,
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GLib+ 2.6 makes several symbols private which were not in any installed
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header files and were never intended to be exported.
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* To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GLib, when compiled
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with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
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points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
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IA__, may be seen when debugging a GLib program.
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* On Windows, GLib no longer opens a console window when printing
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warning messages if stdout or stderr are invalid, as they are in
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"Windows subsystem" (GUI) applications. Simply redirect stdout or
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stderr if you need to see them.
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* The child watch functionality tends to reveal a bug in many
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thread implementations (in particular the older LinuxThreads
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implementation on Linux) where it's not possible to call waitpid()
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for a child created in a different thread. For this reason, for
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maximum portability, you should structure your code to fork all
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child processes that you want to wait for from the main thread.
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* A problem was recently discovered with g_signal_connect_object();
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it doesn't actually disconnect the signal handler once the object being
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connected to dies, just disables it. See the API docs for the function
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for further details and the correct workaround that will continue to
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work with future versions of GLib.
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Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
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(http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product glib.) You will need
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to create an account for yourself.
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In the bug report please include:
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* Information about your system. For instance:
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- What operating system and version
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- For Linux, what version of the C library
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And anything else you think is relevant.
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* How to reproduce the bug.
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If you can reproduce it with one of the test programs that are built
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in the tests/ subdirectory, that will be most convenient. Otherwise,
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please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior.
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As a last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece
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of software that can be downloaded.
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* If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out
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when the crash occured.
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* Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but
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Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the
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patch fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment
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Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch,
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and attach the patch to that bug report.
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Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword
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in their keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GLib
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programming interface, the API keyword should also be included.
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Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU
added
removed
README
