annotate PROGRAMMING_NOTES @ 11719:109ee3bfeac5

[gaim-migrate @ 14010] SF Patch #1333770 from corfe83 "Many times in gaim we use the function g_slist_remove(list,node->data) to remove an element from a GSList. If we already have the pointer to the node we want to delete, it is faster to send it the pointer to the node to delete rather than the data of the node (we can do this by calling g_slist_delete_link(list,node)). This change was made while looking at glib's documentation and the code in glib's gslist.c. This is because as the remove/delete function traverses each node in the list, it doesn't need to spend an extra memory access to retrieve the data for each element in the node it is traversing and then compare, it can simply compare the pointer. In my tests outside of gaim, this makes a big difference if the node you are deleting is at a high index in the list. However, even if you're deleting the first node, it about breaks even. So, I've found each case in gaim where we are calling g_slist_remove, and we already have the pointer to the appropriate node to delete (this is often the case when we're doing a for or while loop on a GSList). I've then replaced it with the appropriate call to g_slist_delete_link. I, however, didn't do this in situations where we are explicitly removing the first element in the list, because in those situations it is an unnecessary change. There should be no difference in behavior, but just in case I've tried running it with valgrind, which reports the same number of memory leaks after my patch as before my patch. Of course, I can't guarantee that my normal behavior on gaim is hitting all the functions I've changed, but in general testing it Works For Me (tm)." As with the last patch, this one may not have a practical performance impact (or maybe it does, I have no idea), but it's not worse for any case. Given two ways of doing things where one is always at least as fast and may be faster under some cases, I like to prefer that faster way. This doesn't make the code any uglier, so I'm applying. committer: Tailor Script <[e-mail]>

Notes on keeping GAIM OS independant
------------------------------------

General
-------
- Use G_DIR_SEPARATOR_S and G_DIR_SEPARATOR for paths

- Use g_getenv, g_snprintf, g_vsnprintf

- Use gaim_home_dir instead of g_get_home_dir or g_getenv("HOME")

- Make sure when including win32dep.h that it is the last header to
  be included.

- Open binary files when reading or writing with 'b' mode.

  e.g: fopen("somefile", "wb");

  Not doing so will open files in windows using defaut translation mode. 
  i.e. newline -> <CR><LF>

Paths
-----

- DATADIR, LOCALEDIR & LIBDIR are defined in wingaim as functions.
  Doing the following will therefore break the windows build:

  printf("File in DATADIR is: %s\n", DATADIR G_DIR_SEPARATOR_S "pic.png");

  it should be:

  printf("File in DATADIR is: %s%s%s\n", DATADIR, G_DIR_SEPARATOR_S, "pic.png");

PLUGINS & PROTOS
----------------

- G_MODULE_EXPORT all functions which are to be accessed from outside the
  scope of its "dll" or "so". (E.G. gaim_plugin_init)

- G_MODULE_IMPORT all global variables which are located outside your
  dynamic library. (E.G. connections)

  (Not doing this will cause "Memory Access Violations" in Win32)