Low-level core library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK+ and GNOME.
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Gleb Popov dae3b8bd15 Introduce a special mode of operating for the inotify GFileMonitor backend
libinotify-kqueue is a library that implements inotify interface in terms of
kqueue/kevent API available on Mac OS and *BSD systems. The original kqueue
backend seems to be a predecessor version of the code that is currently present
in libinotify-kqueue. Under the hood the library implements a sophisticated
filesystem changes detection algorithm that is derived from the glib backend
code.

Updating the native glib kqueue backend requires substantial work, because code
bases have diverged greatly. Another approach is taken, instead. libinotify-kqueue
can serve as a drop-in replacement for Linux inotify API, thus allowing to
reuse the inotify backend code. The compatibility, however, comes at cost, since
the library has to emulate the inotify descriptor via an unix domain socket.
This means that delivering an event involves copying the data into the kernel
and then pulling it back.

The recent libinotify-kqueue release adds a new mode of operation called "direct".
In this mode the socket pipe is replaced with another kqueue that is used to
deliver events via a kevent(EVFILT_USER) call.
Employing the direct mode requires minor changes to the client code compared
to using plain inotify API, but in return it allows for reusing libinotify's
algorithms without a performance penalty. Luckily, all required changes are
consolidated in one file called inotify-kernel.c

This puts us in the best of possible worlds. On one hand we share a lot of code
with glib inotify backend, which is far more thoroughly tested and widely used.
On the other we support a range of non-Linux systems and consolidate the business
logic in one library. I plan to do the same trick for QFileSystemWatcher which
will give us the same behaviour between Gtk and Qt applications.

The glib test suite passes for both old kqueue backend and new libinotify-kqueue
one. However, the AppStream FileMonitor tests are failing with the old backend,
but pass with the new one, so this is still an observable improvement.

Relevant libinotify-kqueue PR: https://github.com/libinotify-kqueue/libinotify-kqueue/pull/19
2024-09-19 09:54:56 +03:00
.gitlab-ci build: Bump gvdb subproject dependency and disable tests 2024-09-12 21:15:42 +01:00
.reuse reuse: License all .gitignore files as CC0-1.0 (public domain) 2024-04-17 15:32:42 +01:00
docs docs(glib): Fix link in string-utils ref 2024-09-12 06:04:34 -04:00
fuzzing gthreadedresolver: Move private testing symbols to a private header 2024-02-09 10:05:56 +00:00
gio Introduce a special mode of operating for the inotify GFileMonitor backend 2024-09-19 09:54:56 +03:00
girepository Merge branch 'wfloat-conversion' into 'main' 2024-09-17 17:57:11 +00:00
glib tests: Add some explicit float → int casts 2024-09-17 23:54:55 +01:00
gmodule build: Drop redundant install_tag arguments for headers 2024-09-11 22:04:39 -07:00
gobject Merge branch 'wfloat-conversion' into 'main' 2024-09-17 17:57:11 +00:00
gthread docs: spelling and grammar fixes 2024-04-01 11:01:06 +00:00
LICENSES girepository: Add remaining license/copyright SPDX headers 2023-10-25 17:12:25 +01:00
m4macros m4macros: drop unused m4 files 2023-07-30 17:03:07 +04:00
po Merge branch 'main' into 'main' 2024-09-12 22:23:46 +00:00
subprojects build: Bump gvdb subproject dependency and disable tests 2024-09-12 21:15:42 +01:00
tests tests: Run lint tests with detected bash 2024-08-27 11:40:18 -07:00
tools tools/glib.supp: Ignore valgrind false-positive error on wcsxfrm 2024-08-02 13:57:29 +02:00
.clang-format CI: Code check formating in CI 2019-11-21 14:03:01 -06:00
.dir-locals.el Add .dir-locals.el to tell Emacs users not to use tabs for C 2012-07-30 04:09:08 -04:00
.editorconfig docs: Add .editorconfig file 2021-10-28 14:47:53 +01:00
.gitignore docs: Move INSTALL.in to INSTALL.md 2022-05-11 13:02:49 +01:00
.gitlab-ci.yml Merge branch 'wip/pwithnall/3458-scan-build' into 'main' 2024-09-13 15:24:32 +00:00
.gitmodules build: Bump gvdb subproject dependency and disable tests 2024-09-12 21:15:42 +01:00
.lcovrc ci: Also compile C++ files with coverage collection 2024-08-02 13:57:29 +02:00
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md docs: Update Code of Conduct URI 2024-04-12 20:36:29 +01:00
CONTRIBUTING.md ci: Use meson compile rather than bare ninja 2023-08-16 13:07:05 +01:00
COPYING docs: Add all used licenses in a REUSE-compatible directory 2022-05-17 17:23:34 +01:00
glib.doap doap: Remove invalid maintainer entry 2024-08-12 11:46:22 +00:00
INSTALL.md docs: Document issue and merge request triaging and review guidelines 2023-06-29 16:50:00 +01:00
meson.build Introduce a special mode of operating for the inotify GFileMonitor backend 2024-09-19 09:54:56 +03:00
meson.options Add Meson option that allows selecting GFileMonitor's backend implementation 2024-09-18 12:01:27 +03:00
NEWS 2.81.2 2024-08-16 19:37:20 +01:00
README.md docs: Clarify link in README.md 2024-08-29 08:58:36 +01:00
SECURITY.md Expand security policy to cover previous stable branch 2023-10-03 09:12:37 +01:00

GLib

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 download locations are: https://download.gnome.org/sources/glib

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

Installation

See the file INSTALL.md. There is separate and more in-depth documentation for building GLib on Windows.

Supported versions

Upstream GLib only supports the most recent stable release series, the previous stable release series, and the current development release series. All older versions are not supported upstream and may contain bugs, some of which may be exploitable security vulnerabilities.

See SECURITY.md for more details.

Documentation

API documentation is available online for GLib for the:

Discussion

If you have a question about how to use GLib, seek help on GNOMEs Discourse instance. Alternatively, ask a question on StackOverflow and tag it glib.

Reporting bugs

Bugs should be reported to the GNOME issue tracking system. You will need to create an account for yourself. You may also submit bugs by e-mail (without an account) by e-mailing incoming+gnome-glib-658-issue-@gitlab.gnome.org, but this will give you a degraded experience.

Bugs are for reporting problems in GLib itself, not for asking questions about how to use it. To ask questions, use one of our discussion forums.

In bug reports 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 occurred.
  • Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not necessary.

Contributing to GLib

Please follow the contribution guide to know how to start contributing to GLib.

Patches should be submitted as merge requests to gitlab.gnome.org. Note that you will need to be logged in to the site to use this page. If the patch fixes an existing issue, please refer to the issue in your commit message with the following notation (for issue 123):

Closes: #123

Otherwise, create a new merge request that introduces the change. Filing a separate issue is not required.