General Information
===================

This is GLib version @GLIB_VERSION@. GLib is the low-level core
library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK+ and GNOME. It
provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and
interfaces for such runtime functionality as an event loop, threads,
dynamic loading, and an object system.

The official ftp site is:
  ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk

The official web site is:
  http://www.gtk.org/

Information about mailing lists can be found at
  http://www.gtk.org/mailinglists.html

To subscribe: mail -s subscribe gtk-list-request@gnome.org < /dev/null
(Send mail to gtk-list-request@gnome.org with the subject "subscribe")

Installation
============

See the file 'INSTALL'

Notes about GLib 2.6.0
======================

* GLib 2.6 introduces the concept of 'GLib filename encoding', which is the
  on-disk encoding on Unix, but UTF-8 on Windows. All GLib functions
  returning or accepting pathnames have been changed to expect
  filenames in this encoding, and the common POSIX functions dealing
  with pathnames have been wrapped. On Windows these wrappers use the
  wide-character API to do the actual file handling, so applications
  can handle file names containing any Unicode characters, not just
  those in the system codepage. (Wide character API is not available
  on Win9x.)

  To keep binary compatibility with applications compiled against
  older versions of GLib, the Windows DLL still provides entry points
  with the old semantics using the old names, and applications
  compiled agains GLib 2.6 will actually use new names for the
  functions. This is transparent to the programmer.

* Likewise, g_get_user_name() and g_get_real_name() have been changed to return
  UTF-8 on Windows, while keeping the old semantics for applications compiled
  against older versions of GLib.

* The GLib uses an '_' prefix to indicate private symbols that
  must not be used by applications. On some platforms, symbols beginning 
  with prefixes such as _g will be exported from the library, on others not. 
  In no case can applications use these private symbols. In addition to that, 
  GLib+ 2.6 makes several symbols private which were not in any installed 
  header files and were never intended to be exported.

* GLib uses a technique involving macros for reducing the amount of PLT
  redirections which has the side effect that the names of internally used
  GLib functions are prefixed with IA__. The g_return_if_fail() macros
  strip this prefix away, but it will show up e.g. in a debugger.

* On Windows, GLib no longer opens a console window when printing
  warning messages if stdout or stderr are invalid, as they are in
  "Windows subsystem" (GUI) applications. Simply redirect stdout or
  stderr if you need to see them.

* The child watch functionality tends to reveal a bug in many
  thread implementations (in particular the older LinuxThreads implementation
  on Linux) where it's not possible to call waitpid() for a child
  created in a different thread. For this reason, for maximum portability,
  you should structure your code to fork all child processes that you want
  to wait for from the main thread.

* A problem was recently discovered with g_signal_connect_object(); 
  it doesn't actually disconnect the signal handler once the object being 
  connected to dies, just disables it. See the API docs for the function 
  for further details and the correct workaround that will continue to 
  work with future versions of GLib.

How to report bugs
==================

Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system. 
(http://bugzilla.gnome.org, product glib.) You will need
to create an account for yourself.

In the bug report please include:

* Information about your system. For instance:

   - What operating system and version
   - For Linux, what version of the C library

  And anything else you think is relevant.

* How to reproduce the bug. 

  If you can reproduce it with the testgtk program that is built 
  in the gtk/ subdirectory, that will be most convenient.  Otherwise, 
  please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. 
  As a last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece 
  of software that can be downloaded.

* If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out
  when the crash occured.

* Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but
  is not necessary.

Patches
=======

Patches should also be submitted to bugzilla.gnome.org. If the
patch fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment
to that bug report.

Otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch,
and attach the patch to that bug report.

Bug reports containing patches should include the PATCH keyword
in their keyword fields. If the patch adds to or changes the GLib 
programming interface, the API keyword should also be included.

Patches should be in unified diff form. (The -u option to GNU
diff.)