annotate PROGRAMMING_NOTES @ 5205:fefad67de2c7

[gaim-migrate @ 5573] I had a damn good commit message, but it was eaten. Let's try it again. Announcing, Gaim Plugin API version 2.0, or GPAPIV2.0 for short. There are lots'a cool thingies here. Okay now, this isn't as cool as the previous message, but: 1) There's now a single entry function for all plugin types. It returns a detailed information structure on the plugin. This removes a lot of the ugliness from old plugins. Oh yeah, libicq wasn't converted to this, so if you use it, well, you shouldn't have used it anyway, but now you can't! bwahahaha. Use AIM/ICQ. 2) There are now 3 types of plugins: Standard, Loader, and Protocol plugins. Standard plugins are, well, standard, compiled plugins. Loader plugins load other plugins. For example, the perl support is now a loader plugin. It loads perl scripts. In the future, we'll have Ruby and Python loader plugins. Protocol plugins are, well, protocol plugins... yeah... 3) Plugins have unique IDs, so they can be referred to or automatically updated from a plugin database in the future. Neat, huh? 4) Plugins will have dependency support in the future, and can be hidden, so if you have, say, a logging core plugin, it won't have to show up, but then you load the GTK+ logging plugin and it'll auto-load the core plugin. Core/UI split plugins! 5) There will eventually be custom plugin signals and RPC of some sort, for the core/ui split plugins. So, okay, back up .gaimrc. I'd like to thank my parents for their support, javabsp for helping convert a bunch of protocol plugins, and Etan for helping convert a bunch of standard plugins. Have fun. If you have any problems, please let me know, but you probably won't have anything major happen. You will have to convert your plugins, though, and I'm not guaranteeing that all perl scripts will still work. I'll end up changing the perl script API eventually, so I know they won't down the road. Don't worry, though. It'll be mass cool. faceprint wants me to just commit the damn code already. So, here we go!!! .. .. I need a massage. From a young, cute girl. Are there any young, cute girls in the audience? IM me plz k thx. 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)