annotate PROGRAMMING_NOTES @ 9426:dfee44a581a4

[gaim-migrate @ 10244] " This patch causes gaim to write out a file containing an ascii representation of the big-endian version of the port number which gaim listens in on for incoming zephyrs, of the form "gaimwgXXXXXX". It will be useful for debugging occasional problems with zephyr loss of subscriptions (chats). I've made some changes in util.c to allow the creation of temporary files with arbitrary templates: I've renamed gaim_mkstemp to gaim_mkstemp_template, modifying it to take a second argument, template, and use that instead of gaim_mkstemp_templ. A new gaim_mkstemp which is a wrapper around gaim_mkstemp_template has been put in place for compatibility with all the existing code using this function." --Arun A Tharuvai "The patch I submitted causes the wgfile to always be written out, because it would be useful for endusers too, and also to try to keep it consistent with the standard zephyr distribution." --Arun A Tharuvai 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)