- Table of Contents
- GLib Overview
- Compiling the GLib package --
How to compile GLib itself
- Compiling GLib Applications --
How to compile your GLib application
- Running GLib Applications --
How to run and debug your GLib application
- Changes from 1.0 to 2.0 --
Incompatible changes made between version 1.0 and version 2.0
- Mailing lists and bug reports --
Getting help with GLib
- GLib Fundamentals
- Basic Types -- standard GLib types, defined for ease-of-use and portability.
- Limits of Basic Types -- portable method of determining the limits of the standard types.
- Standard Macros -- commonly-used macros.
- Type Conversion Macros --
portably storing integers in pointer variables.
- Byte Order Macros -- a portable way to convert between different byte orders.
- Numerical Definitions -- mathematical constants, and floating point decomposition.
- Miscellaneous Macros -- specialized macros which are not used often.
- GLib Core Application Support
- The Main Event Loop -- manages all available sources of events.
- Threads --
thread abstraction; including threads, different mutexes, conditions
and thread private data.
- Thread Pools -- pools of threads to execute work concurrently.
- Asynchronous Queues -- asynchronous communication between threads.
- Dynamic Loading of Modules -- portable method for dynamically loading 'plug-ins'.
- Memory Allocation -- general memory-handling.
- IO Channels -- portable support for using files, pipes and sockets.
- Error Reporting -- a system for reporting errors.
- Message Output and Debugging Functions -- functions to output messages and help debug applications.
- Message Logging -- versatile support for logging messages with different levels of importance.
- GLib Utilities
- String Utility Functions -- various string-related functions.
- Character Set Conversion -- convert strings between different character sets using iconv().
- Unicode Manipulation -- functions operating on Unicode characters and UTF-8 strings.
- Date and Time Functions -- calendrical calculations and miscellaneous time stuff.
- Random Numbers -- pseudo random number generator.
- Hook Functions -- support for manipulating lists of hook functions.
- Miscellaneous Utility Functions -- a selection of portable utility functions.
- Lexical Scanner -- a general purpose lexical scanner.
- Automatic String Completion -- support for automatic completion using a group of target strings.
- Timers --
keep track of elapsed time.
- Spawning Processes -- process launching with fork()/exec().
- File Utilities -- various file-related functions.
- Shell-related Utilities -- shell-like commandline handling.
- Glob-style pattern matching -- matches strings against patterns containing '*' (wildcard) and '?' (joker).
- Simple XML Subset Parser -- parses a subset of XML.
- Windows Compatibility Functions -- UNIX emulation on Windows.
- GLib Data Types
- Memory Chunks -- efficient way to allocate groups of equal-sized chunks of memory.
- Doubly-Linked Lists -- linked lists containing integer values or pointers to data, with the ability
to iterate over the list in both directions.
- Singly-Linked Lists -- linked lists containing integer values or pointers to data, limited to
iterating over the list in one direction.
- Double-ended Queues -- double-ended queue data structure.
- Trash Stacks -- maintain a stack of unused allocated memory chunks.
- Hash Tables -- associations between keys and values so that given a key the value
can be found quickly.
- Strings -- text buffers which grow automatically as text is added.
- String Chunks -- efficient storage of groups of strings.
- Arrays -- arrays of arbitrary elements which grow automatically as elements are added.
- Pointer Arrays -- arrays of pointers to any type of data, which grow automatically as new
elements are added.
- Byte Arrays -- arrays of bytes, which grow automatically as elements are added.
- Balanced Binary Trees -- a sorted collection of key/value pairs optimized for searching
and traversing in order.
- N-ary Trees -- trees of data with any number of branches.
- Quarks -- a 2-way association between a string and a unique integer identifier.
- Keyed Data Lists -- lists of data elements which are accessible by a string or GQuark identifier.
- Datasets -- associate groups of data elements with particular memory locations.
- Relations and Tuples -- tables of data which can be indexed on any number of fields.
- Caches -- caches allow sharing of complex data structures to save resources.
- Memory Allocators -- allocates chunks of memory for GList, GSList and GNode.