glib/README.in
David Zeuthen 04f0742818 If possible, always pass FUSE file:// URIs (such as
2008-10-01  David Zeuthen  <davidz@redhat.com>

	* gdesktopappinfo.c (expand_macro): If possible, always pass FUSE
	file:// URIs (such as '/home/davidz/.gvfs/sftp on foo/file.avi')
	instead of the gio URI (such as sftp://foo/file.avi) when using
	g_app_info_launch() and friends. With a sufficiently recent gvfs,
	apps using gio+gvfs will map the FUSE file:// URI back to the gio
	URI (and thus bypass the fuse daemon) thanks the patch from bug
	#530654.  Since Nautilus is an user of g_app_info_launch() it
	means that non-gio POSIX apps, such as mplayer, will Just Work(tm)
	when launced via the file manager. Win. Fixes bug #528670.

	* gappinfo.c: Add some notes about the FUSE POSIX URI <-> GIO URI
	mapping to the description of GAppInfo.

2008-10-01  David Zeuthen  <davidz@redhat.com>

	* README.in: Add "Notes about glib 2.20" section detailing the
	ramifications of the patch from bug #528670.


svn path=/trunk/; revision=7566
2008-10-01 17:46:57 +00:00

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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/glib
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 2.20
=====================
^ 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
constructors. The intent of this change is to better integrate
POSIX-only applications, see bug #528670 for the rationale. The
only user-visible change is when an application needs to examine an
URI passed to it (e.g. as a positional parameter). Instead of
looking at the given URI, the application will now need to look at
the result of g_file_get_uri() after having constructed a GFile
object with the given URI.
Notes about GLib 2.18
=====================
* 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
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
--disable-xattr and --disable-selinux to build without these.
Notes about GLib 2.10
=====================
* The functions g_snprintf() and g_vsnprintf() have been removed from
the gprintf.h header, since they are already declared in glib.h. This
doesn't break documented use of gprintf.h, but people have been known
to include gprintf.h without including glib.h.
* 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.
* '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.
* A new type, GInitiallyUnowned, has been introduced, which is
intended to serve as a common implementation of the 'floating reference'
concept that is e.g. used by GtkObject. Note that changing the
inheritance hierarchy of a type can cause problems for language
bindings and other code which needs to work closely with the type
system. Therefore, switching to GInitiallyUnowned should be done
carefully. g_object_compat_control() has been added to GLib 2.8.5
to help with the transition.
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. These wrappers are declared in the
header <glib/gstdio.h> which must be included explicitly; it is not
included through <glib.h>.
On current (NT-based) Windows versions, where the on-disk file names
are Unicode, these wrappers use the wide-character API in the C
library. Thus applications can handle file names containing any
Unicode characters through GLib's own API and its POSIX wrappers,
not just file names restricted to characters in the system codepage.
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 against GLib 2.6 will actually use new names for the
functions. This is transparent to the programmer.
When compiling against GLib 2.6, applications intended to be
portable to Windows must take the UTF-8 file name encoding into
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
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.
* 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
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 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
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.)