annotate PROGRAMMING_NOTES @ 9407:379f59c5b1ff

[gaim-migrate @ 10222] Andrew Wellington says, "Returning a local buffer is not a good idea, it'll work sometimes for some platforms, but the rest of the time it'll give garbage This patch changes oscar_caps_to_string to return a g_malloc()'d block, that is then g_free()'d by the caller." I mostly disagreed with him, but this change doesn't seem like such a bad idea regardless. See http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=976213&group_id=235&atid=300235 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");

- When writing out paths to .gaimrc, use wgaim_escape_dirsep. This is necessary
  because the Windows dir separator '\' is being used to escape characters, when
  paths are read in from the .gaimrc file.

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)