Notes about GLib 2.20
=====================
-^ The functions for launching applications (e.g. g_app_info_launch() +
+* The functions for launching applications (e.g. g_app_info_launch() +
friends) now passes a FUSE file:// URI if possible (requires gvfs
with the FUSE daemon to be running and operational). With gvfs 2.26,
FUSE file:// URIs will be mapped back to gio URIs in the GFile
=====================
* The recommended way of using GLib has always been to only include the
- toplevel headers glib.h, glib-object.h and gio.h. GLib enforces this by
- generating an error when individual headers are directly included.
- To help with the transition, the enforcement is not turned on by
+ toplevel headers glib.h, glib-object.h and gio.h. GLib enforces this by
+ generating an error when individual headers are directly included.
+ To help with the transition, the enforcement is not turned on by
default for GLib headers (it is turned on for GObject and GIO).
To turn it on, define the preprocessor symbol G_DISABLE_SINGLE_INCLUDES.
-
+
Notes about GLib 2.16
=====================
* GLib now includes GIO, which adds optional dependencies against libattr
- and libselinux for extended attribute and SELinux support. Use
+ and libselinux for extended attribute and SELinux support. Use
--disable-xattr and --disable-selinux to build without these.
Notes about GLib 2.10
* The Unicode support has been updated to Unicode 4.1. This adds several
new members to the GUnicodeBreakType enumeration.
-* The support for Solaris threads has been retired. Solaris has provided
- POSIX threads for long enough now to have them available on every
- Solaris platform.
+* The support for Solaris threads has been retired. Solaris has provided
+ POSIX threads for long enough now to have them available on every
+ Solaris platform.
-* 'make check' has been changed to validate translations by calling
- msgfmt with the -c option. As a result, it may fail on systems with
- older gettext implementations (GNU gettext < 0.14.1, or Solaris gettext).
+* 'make check' has been changed to validate translations by calling
+ msgfmt with the -c option. As a result, it may fail on systems with
+ older gettext implementations (GNU gettext < 0.14.1, or Solaris gettext).
'make check' will also fail on systems where the C compiler does not
support ELF visibility attributes.
-* The GMemChunk API has been deprecated in favour of a new 'slice
- allocator'. See the g_slice documentation for more details.
+* The GMemChunk API has been deprecated in favour of a new 'slice
+ allocator'. See the g_slice documentation for more details.
* A new type, GInitiallyUnowned, has been introduced, which is
intended to serve as a common implementation of the 'floating reference'
consideration, and use the gstdio wrappers to access files whose
names have been constructed from strings returned from GLib.
-* 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
+* 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
+ 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.
-* To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GLib, when compiled
- with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
- points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
+* To reduce code size and improve efficiency, GLib, when compiled
+ with the GNU toolchain, has separate internal and external entry
+ points for exported functions. The internal names, which begin with
IA__, may be seen when debugging a GLib program.
* On Windows, GLib no longer opens a console window when printing
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
+ 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
+* 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.
+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.
And anything else you think is relevant.
-* How to reproduce the bug.
+* How to reproduce the bug.
- If you can reproduce it with one of the test programs that are built
- in the tests/ 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
+ If you can reproduce it with one of the test programs that are built
+ in the tests/ 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
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
+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
--- /dev/null
+GLib is part of the GNOME git repository. At the current time, any
+person with write access to the GNOME repository, can make changes to
+GLib. This is a good thing, in that it encourages many people to work
+on GLib, and progress can be made quickly. However, GLib is a fairly
+large and complicated package that many other things depend on, so to
+avoid unnecessary breakage, and to take advantage of the knowledge
+about GLib that has been built up over the years, we'd like to ask
+people committing to GLib to follow a few rules:
+
+0) Ask first. If your changes are major, or could possibly break existing
+ code, you should always ask. If your change is minor and you've
+ been working on GLib for a while it probably isn't necessary
+ to ask. But when in doubt, ask. Even if your change is correct,
+ somebody may know a better way to do things.
+
+ If you are making changes to GLib, you should be subscribed
+ to gtk-devel-list@gnome.org. (Subscription address:
+ gtk-devel-list-request@gnome.org.) This is a good place to ask
+ about intended changes.
+
+ #gtk+ on GIMPNet (irc.gimp.org, irc.us.gimp.org, irc.eu.gimp.org, ...)
+ is also a good place to find GTK+ developers to discuss changes with,
+ however, email to gtk-devel-list is the most certain and preferred
+ method.
+
+1) Ask _first_.
+
+2) With git, we no longer maintain a ChangeLog file, but you are expected
+ to produce a meaningful commit message. Changes without a sufficient
+ commit message will be reverted. See below for the expected format
+ of commit messages.
+
+Notes:
+
+* When developing larger features or complicated bug fixes, it is
+ advisable to work in a branch in your own cloned GLib repository.
+ You may even consider making your repository publically available
+ so that others can easily test and review your changes.
+
+* The expected format for git commit messages is as follows:
+
+=== begin example commit ===
+Short explanation of the commit
+
+Longer explanation explaining exactly what's changed, whether any
+external or private interfaces changed, what bugs were fixed (with bug
+tracker reference if applicable) and so forth. Be concise but not too brief.
+=== end example commit ===
+
+ - Always add a brief description of the commit to the _first_ line of
+ the commit and terminate by two newlines (it will work without the
+ second newline, but that is not nice for the interfaces).
+
+ - First line (the brief description) must only be one sentence and
+ should start with a capital letter unless it starts with a lowercase
+ symbol or identifier. Don't use a trailing period either. Don't exceed
+ 72 characters.
+
+ - The main description (the body) is normal prose and should use normal
+ punctuation and capital letters where appropriate. Normally, for patches
+ sent to a mailing list it's copied from there.
+
+ - When committing code on behalf of others use the --author option, e.g.
+ git commit -a --author "Joe Coder <joe@coder.org>" and --signoff.
+
+
+Owen Taylor
+13 Aug 1998
+17 Apr 2001
+
+Matthias Clasen
+31 Mar 2009