view PROGRAMMING_NOTES @ 12233:02833a0ae716

[gaim-migrate @ 14535] SF Patch #1367116 from Michael Carlson "In profiling gaim, I noticed that on simply starting CVS gaim, xmlnode_insert_child is using up by far the most CPU time. After some testing, I realized the reason why: xmlnode_insert_child is called some 18,000 times on startup, and it is inserting the child at the end of the list each time, simply by traversing through the entire linked list. Sometimes this list can have as many as 800 elements. This patch adds a variable to the _xmlnode struct, lastchild, which simply keeps track of the last node in the list of children. This is then used by xmlnode_insert_child to insert at the end of the list, instead of traversing through the whole list each time. The two relevant functions in xmlnode.c that need to be updated to keep track of this function appropriately have been updated. Running 3 times with and without the change, the results from oprofile say it all. Here are the measured number of clock cycles / % of total clock cycles / function used to simply start and close gaim before the change: 204 60.7143 xmlnode_insert_child 210 61.4035 xmlnode_insert_child 230 61.8280 xmlnode_insert_child And after (note that one time no clock cycles were caught at all) 3 2.5862 xmlnode_insert_child 3 2.5641 xmlnode_insert_child This affects other areas of the program than just starting up, but this seems to be the most noticeable place." Speed is good. As I was verifying this patch, I added some g_return_val_if_fail() checks. committer: Tailor Script <[e-mail]>

Notes on keeping GAIM OS independant
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General
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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)