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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
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 GNOME’s 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 you can reproduce it with one of the test programs that are built
in the
- 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.