annotate PROGRAMMING_NOTES @ 9787:904b757835ca

[gaim-migrate @ 10655] after an utter failure to get comments on this since it was updated, and thinking that the functionality is worth having, i present to you: " This is a patch to blist.c and blist.h to modify the GaimBuddy structure to add a field for flags. It also adds a single flag GAIM_BUDDY_NO_SAVE, which can be used to indicate that a particular buddy should not be saved to file. This will be particularly useful for prpls with dynamic group support (which I am working on adding to Meanwhile), such as Oscar's recent buddies group. I used a negative flag (NO_SAVE rather than SAVE) because the default should be for saving to happen, and I didn't want to have to initiate the buddy with a save flag set. To counteract this, there is a macro called GAIM_BUDDY_SHOULD_SAVE which checks for the absense of the flag. Woo-hoo double negative!! The beefy part of this patch also factors out the deeply nested loops of the saving code into separate functions. This code also fixes a minor possible bug wherein when saving only a particular account, a group could be written containing empty contacts (due to checking for the specific account only at the group and buddy levels) Here's a version that places the flags field in the BlistNode, and checks for it at each stage (group, chat, contact, buddy). It didn't erase my buddy list when I tried it, so that's nice at least." --Christopher (siege) O'Brien 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)