annotate README.CVS @ 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]>

If you plan to use gaim CVS, PLEASE read this message in its entirety!

Gaim is a fast-moving project with a somewhat regular release schedule.
Due to the rate of gaim development, CVS undergoes frequent bursts of
massive changes, often leaving behind brokenness and partial
functionality while the responsible developers rewrite some portion of
code or seek to add new features.

What this all boils down to is that CVS _WILL_ sometimes be broken.
Because of this, we ask that users who are not interested in
personally tracking down bugs and fixing them (without a lot of
assistance from the developers!) avoid CVS and use releases.  Since
releases will be made often, this should not prevent anyone from using
the newest, shiniest features -- but it will prevent users from having
to deal with ugly development bugs that we already know about but
haven't gotten around to fixing.

If you are interested in hacking on gaim, please read README and
HACKING, and take note of the issues in PROGRAMMING_NOTES.  (Note that
they may be somewhat out of date at times.) Win32 developers, please
read README.mingw.

By far the best documentation, however, is the documented code.  Not
all parts of gaim have yet been documented, but the major subsystems
are falling fast.  If you have doxygen, you can use the Doxyfile in
the toplevel directory to generate pretty documentation.  Otherwise
(or even if you do!), the header files for each subsystem contain
documentation for the functions they contain.  For instance,
conversation.h contains documentation for the entire
gaim_conversation_* API, and account.h contains documentation for the
gaim_account_* API.

If you have questions, please feel free to contact the gaim developers
by email at [e-mail], on IRC at
irc.freenode.net in #gaim, or via the sourceforge forums at
http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gaim.  Please do as much homework
as you can before contacting us; the more you know about your
question, the faster and more effectively we can help you!

Send patches to [e-mail] or post them in the
Sourceforge forums at http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/gaim.