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.
10 The official ftp site is:
11 ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/glib
13 The official web site is:
16 Information about mailing lists can be found at
17 http://www.gtk.org/mailing-lists.html
19 To subscribe: mail -s subscribe gtk-list-request@gnome.org < /dev/null
20 (Send mail to gtk-list-request@gnome.org with the subject "subscribe")
25 See the file 'INSTALL'
30 * It is no longer necessary to use g_thread_init() or to link against
31 libgthread. libglib is now always thread-enabled. Custom thread
32 system implementations are no longer supported (including errorcheck
35 * The thread and synchronisation APIs have been updated.
36 GMutex and GCond can be statically allocated without explicit
37 initialisation, as can new types GRWLock and GRecMutex. The
38 GStatic_______ variants of these types have been deprecated. GPrivate
39 can also be statically allocated and has a nicer API (deprecating
40 GStaticPrivate). Finally, g_thread_create() has been replaced with a
41 substantially simplified g_thread_new().
43 * The g_once_init_enter()/_leave() functions have been replaced with
44 macros that allow for a pointer to any gsize-sized object, not just a
45 gsize*. The assertions to ensure that a pointer to a correctly-sized
46 object is being used will not work with generic pointers (ie: (void*)
47 and (gpointer) casts) which would have worked with the old version.
49 * It is now mandatory to include glib.h instead of individual headers.
54 * GObject includes a generic marshaller, g_cclosure_marshal_generic.
55 To use it, simply specify NULL as the marshaller in g_signal_new().
56 The generic marshaller is implemented with libffi, and consequently
57 GObject depends on libffi now.
62 * The GApplication API has changed compared to the version that was
63 included in the 2.25 development snapshots. Existing users will need
74 * It is now allowed to call g_thread_init(NULL) multiple times, and
75 to call glib functions before g_thread_init(NULL) is called
76 (although the later is mainly a change in docs as this worked before
77 too). See the GThread reference documentation for the details.
79 * GObject now links to GThread and threads are enabled automatically
80 when g_type_init() is called.
82 * GObject no longer allows to call g_object_set() on construct-only properties
83 while an object is being initialized. If this behavior is needed, setting a
84 custom constructor that just chains up will re-enable this functionality.
86 * GMappedFile on an empty file now returns NULL for the contents instead of
87 returning an empty string. The documentation specifically states that code
88 may not rely on nul-termination here so any breakage caused by this change
89 is a bug in application code.
94 * Repeated calls to g_simple_async_result_set_op_res_gpointer used
95 to leak the data. This has been fixed to always call the provided
101 * The functions for launching applications (e.g. g_app_info_launch() +
102 friends) now passes a FUSE file:// URI if possible (requires gvfs
103 with the FUSE daemon to be running and operational). With gvfs 2.26,
104 FUSE file:// URIs will be mapped back to gio URIs in the GFile
105 constructors. The intent of this change is to better integrate
106 POSIX-only applications, see bug #528670 for the rationale. The
107 only user-visible change is when an application needs to examine an
108 URI passed to it (e.g. as a positional parameter). Instead of
109 looking at the given URI, the application will now need to look at
110 the result of g_file_get_uri() after having constructed a GFile
111 object with the given URI.
113 Notes about GLib 2.18
114 =====================
116 * The recommended way of using GLib has always been to only include the
117 toplevel headers glib.h, glib-object.h and gio.h. GLib enforces this by
118 generating an error when individual headers are directly included.
119 To help with the transition, the enforcement is not turned on by
120 default for GLib headers (it is turned on for GObject and GIO).
121 To turn it on, define the preprocessor symbol G_DISABLE_SINGLE_INCLUDES.
123 Notes about GLib 2.16
124 =====================
126 * GLib now includes GIO, which adds optional dependencies against libattr
127 and libselinux for extended attribute and SELinux support. Use
128 --disable-xattr and --disable-selinux to build without these.
130 Notes about GLib 2.10
131 =====================
133 * The functions g_snprintf() and g_vsnprintf() have been removed from
134 the gprintf.h header, since they are already declared in glib.h. This
135 doesn't break documented use of gprintf.h, but people have been known
136 to include gprintf.h without including glib.h.
138 * The Unicode support has been updated to Unicode 4.1. This adds several
139 new members to the GUnicodeBreakType enumeration.
141 * The support for Solaris threads has been retired. Solaris has provided
142 POSIX threads for long enough now to have them available on every
145 * 'make check' has been changed to validate translations by calling
146 msgfmt with the -c option. As a result, it may fail on systems with
147 older gettext implementations (GNU gettext < 0.14.1, or Solaris gettext).
148 'make check' will also fail on systems where the C compiler does not
149 support ELF visibility attributes.
151 * The GMemChunk API has been deprecated in favour of a new 'slice
152 allocator'. See the g_slice documentation for more details.
154 * A new type, GInitiallyUnowned, has been introduced, which is
155 intended to serve as a common implementation of the 'floating reference'
156 concept that is e.g. used by GtkObject. Note that changing the
157 inheritance hierarchy of a type can cause problems for language
158 bindings and other code which needs to work closely with the type
159 system. Therefore, switching to GInitiallyUnowned should be done
160 carefully. g_object_compat_control() has been added to GLib 2.8.5
161 to help with the transition.
163 Notes about GLib 2.6.0
164 ======================
166 * GLib 2.6 introduces the concept of 'GLib filename encoding', which is the
167 on-disk encoding on Unix, but UTF-8 on Windows. All GLib functions
168 returning or accepting pathnames have been changed to expect
169 filenames in this encoding, and the common POSIX functions dealing
170 with pathnames have been wrapped. These wrappers are declared in the
171 header <glib/gstdio.h> which must be included explicitly; it is not
172 included through <glib.h>.
174 On current (NT-based) Windows versions, where the on-disk file names
175 are Unicode, these wrappers use the wide-character API in the C
176 library. Thus applications can handle file names containing any
177 Unicode characters through GLib's own API and its POSIX wrappers,
178 not just file names restricted to characters in the system codepage.
180 To keep binary compatibility with applications compiled against
181 older versions of GLib, the Windows DLL still provides entry points
182 with the old semantics using the old names, and applications
183 compiled against GLib 2.6 will actually use new names for the
184 functions. This is transparent to the programmer.
186 When compiling against GLib 2.6, applications intended to be
187 portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
188 consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
189 names have been constructed from strings returned from GLib.
191 * Likewise, g_get_user_name() and g_get_real_name() have been changed
192 to return UTF-8 on Windows, while keeping the old semantics for
193 applications compiled against older versions of GLib.
195 * The GLib uses an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
196 must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning
197 with prefixes such as _g will be exported from the library, on others not.
198 In no case can applications use these private symbols. In addition to that,
199 GLib+ 2.6 makes several symbols private which were not in any installed
200 header files and were never intended to be exported.
202 * To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GLib, when compiled
203 with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
204 points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
205 IA__, may be seen when debugging a GLib program.
207 * On Windows, GLib no longer opens a console window when printing
208 warning messages if stdout or stderr are invalid, as they are in
209 "Windows subsystem" (GUI) applications. Simply redirect stdout or
210 stderr if you need to see them.
212 * The child watch functionality tends to reveal a bug in many
213 thread implementations (in particular the older LinuxThreads
214 implementation on Linux) where it's not possible to call waitpid()
215 for a child created in a different thread. For this reason, for
216 maximum portability, you should structure your code to fork all
217 child processes that you want to wait for from the main thread.
219 * A problem was recently discovered with g_signal_connect_object();
220 it doesn't actually disconnect the signal handler once the object being
221 connected to dies, just disables it. See the API docs for the function
222 for further details and the correct workaround that will continue to
223 work with future versions of GLib.
228 Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system.
229 (http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product glib.) You will need
230 to create an account for yourself.
232 In the bug report please include:
234 * Information about your system. For instance:
236 - What operating system and version
237 - For Linux, what version of the C library
239 And anything else you think is relevant.
241 * How to reproduce the bug.
243 If you can reproduce it with one of the test programs that are built
244 in the tests/ subdirectory, that will be most convenient. Otherwise,
245 please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior.
246 As a last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece
247 of software that can be downloaded.
249 * If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out
250 when the crash occured.
252 * Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but
258 Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the
259 patch fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment
262 Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch,
263 and attach the patch to that bug report.
265 Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -up option to GNUdiff.)