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2006-01-26 Matthias Clasen <mclasen@redhat.com> * gobject/tut_tools.xml: Mention g_trap_object_ref * glib/running.sgml: Add g_trap variables to the index. Mention conditional breakpoints as an alternative.
100 lines
4.0 KiB
XML
100 lines
4.0 KiB
XML
<partintro>
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<para>
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Several useful developer tools have been build around GObject technology.
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The next sections briefly introduce them and link to the respective project pages.
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</para>
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</partintro>
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<chapter id="tools-gob">
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<title>GObject builder</title>
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<para>
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Writing gobjects can be a tedious task. It requires a lot of typing and just
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doing a copy/paste requires a great deal of care.
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One obvious idea is to use some sort of templates for the class skeletons.
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and then run them through a special tool to generate the real C files.
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<ulink url="http://www.5z.com/jirka/gob.html">GOB/</ulink> (or GOB2) is such
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a tool. It is a preprocessor which can be used to build GObjects
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with inline C code so that there is no need to edit the generated C code.
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The syntax is inspired by Java and Yacc or Lex. The implementation is
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intentionally kept simple: the inline C code provided by the user
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is not parsed.
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</para>
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</chapter>
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<chapter id="tools-ginspector">
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<title>Graphical inspection of Gobjects</title>
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<para>
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Yet another tool that you may find helpful when working with
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GObjects is <ulink
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url="http://sourceforge.net/projects/g-inspector">G-Inspector</ulink>. It
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is able to display Glib/Gtk+ objects and their properties.
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</para>
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</chapter>
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<chapter id="tools-refdb">
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<title>Debugging reference count problems</title>
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<para>
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The reference counting scheme used by GObject does solve quite
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a few memory management problems but also introduces new sources of bugs.
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In large applications, finding the exact spot where the reference count
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of an Object is not properly handled can be very difficult. Hopefully,
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there exist a tool named <ulink url="http://refdbg.sf.net/">refdbg/</ulink>
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which can be used to automate the task of tracking down the location
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of invalid code with regard to reference counting. This application
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intercepts the reference counting calls and tries to detect invalid behavior.
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It suports a filter-rule mechanism to let you trace only the objects you are
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interested in and it can be used together with gdb.
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</para>
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<para>
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<indexterm><primary>g_trap_object_ref</primary></indexterm>
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Note that if GObject has been compiled with <option>--enable-debug=yes</option>,
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it exports a trap variable
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<programlisting>
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static volatile GObject *g_trap_object_ref;
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</programlisting>
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If set to a non-NULL value, <link linkend="g-object-ref">g_object_ref</link>()
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and <link linkend="g-object-unref">g_object_unref</link>() will be intercepted
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when called with that value.
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</para>
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</chapter>
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<chapter id="tools-gtkdoc">
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<title>Writing API docs</title>
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<para>The API documentation for most of the Glib, GObject, GTK+ and GNOME
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libraries is built with a combination of complex tools. Typically, the part of
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the documentation which describes the behavior of each function is extracted
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from the specially-formatted source code comments by a tool named gtk-doc which
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generates docbook xml and merges this docbook xml with a set of master xml
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docbook files. These xml docbook files are finally processed with xsltproc
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(a small program part of the libxslt library) to generate the final html
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output. Other tools can be used to generate pdf output from the source xml.
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The following code excerpt shows what these comments look like.
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<programlisting>
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/**
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* gtk_widget_freeze_child_notify:
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* @widget: a #GtkWidget
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*
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* Stops emission of "child-notify" signals on @widget. The signals are
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* queued until gtk_widget_thaw_child_notify() is called on @widget.
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*
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* This is the analogue of g_object_freeze_notify() for child properties.
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**/
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void
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gtk_widget_freeze_child_notify (GtkWidget *widget)
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{
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...
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</programlisting>
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</para>
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<para>
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The great thoroughful
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<ulink url="http://developer.gnome.org/arch/doc/authors.html">documentation</ulink>
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on how to setup and use gtk-doc in your
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project is provided on the gnome developer website.
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</para>
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</chapter>
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