GLib2

GLib2 is an open source and freely downloadable low-level core library software that forms the basis for the GTK+ GUI toolkit framework, as well as for the GNOME graphical desktop environment.

The software has been designed from the offset to provide data structure handling for the C programming language, portability wrappers, powerful interfaces for runtime functionality like event loop, threads, dynamic loading, as well as a reliable object system.

Distributed as a standalone library software

GLib2 is distributed as a standalone library software, but it is an important part of the GTK+ Toolkit project. Both are used by many GNOME-based applications, and by the entire GNOME desktop environment.

As its name suggests, GLib2 is the next generation GLib library, used in modern applications that are part of the latest GNOME distribution and use the GTK+ 2 or even the newer GTK+ 3 frameworks. The latest release of GLib2 is always fully compatible with the latest release of GTK+ and GNOME.

Getting started with GLib2

The GLib2 library is usually installed automatically along with the GNOME desktop environment or various other GNOME apps that require it. It is usually distributed as a source package, which can be easily installed on 32 or 64-bit computer platforms.

To install GLib2 using the source package, download the latest release from either Softoware or the project’s official website (see the homepage link at the end of the article), save it somewhere on your computer, and unpack it.

Open a terminal emulator app, navigate to the location where you have extracted the archive file (e.g. cd /home/softoware/glib-2.43.3), run the ‘./configure && make’ command to configure and compile the library, followed by the ‘sudo make install’ command to install it system wide and make it available to all applications that require it.

What is new in this release:

• Require pcre 8.31
• Require meson 0.47.0
• Bugs fixed:
• 742456 Add g_steal_pointer() convenience function to mark ownership...
• 795569 MinGW CI: fix tests
• 796341 gmem.h: Use typeof() in g_steal_pointer() macro
• #1013 Support for per-session overrides
• #1360 glib-mkenums breaks if option specified but no nick
• #1175 Add names and tags to various GSources and GTasks constructed in GLib
• #903 g_main_context_wait() not deprecated in API, but emits a g_critical()...
• #786 Fix memory leaks in libgio tests
• #927 gio/gresource.c:do_lookup check for terminating "/"
• #976 Document difference between g_assert() and g_assert_*()...
• #1447 glib 2.57.1: test_month_names: assertion failed...
• Translation updates:
• Friulian
• German
• Romanian

What is new in version 2.57.1:

• Bug fixes:
• 793400 g_application_id_is_valid() not strict enough
• 793578 gdatetime tests depend on Japanese translation of month names
• 793645 test_month_names: Updated translations needed for el_GR, hr_HR, ru_RU
• 794194 gobject_gdb.py: 'address' is a property of gdb.Value not a function
• 794473 Remove duplicated option in gio.xml
• 794506 glib-mkenums: Enters infinite loop if using typedef enum SomeIdentifier
• 794528 Fix segfault caused by use-after-free in GPollFileMonitor
• 794606 glib-2.56.0 fails to compile when res_nquery is not available
• 794686 Date (except weekday) displayed in English
• Translation updates:
• Slovak
• Slovenian
• Spanish

What is new in version :

• Bugs fixed:
• 780296 Fix a race in gio open
• Translation updates:
• Catalan (Valencian)
• Nepali
• Slovak
• Slovenian

What is new in version 2.54.2:

• Bugs fixed:
• 780296 Fix a race in gio open
• Translation updates:
• Catalan (Valencian)
• Nepali
• Slovak
• Slovenian

What is new in version 2.54.0:

• Bugs fixed:
• 780861 Crash in GnomeWallClock
• 786983 Please make the output of gio-querymodules deterministic
• 787109 Valgrind false positive in ioctl() in btrfs file copy
• 787123 glib: Slighty update GIOChannel documentation
• 787146 GMainLoop: match of parameter pair of LOCK_CONTEXT/UNLOCK_CONTEXT
• Translation updates:
• Basque
• Catalan
• Romanian
• Swedish

What is new in version 2.53.3:

• Bugs fixed:
• 658446 Add translation comment for wrong password notice string
• 661926 Improve the default logging setup in GLib
• 674885 type initialisation deadlock in GObject
• 775593 GIO cannot write symlinks on FreeBSD and NetBSD
• 776169 Various gio-tool fixes
• 776333 Fix annotation on g_file_copy_async()
• 776504 Upgrade license from LGPLv2+ to LGPLv2.1+
• 777307 race condition between gdbus signal callback and g_bus_unwatch_name...
• 778422 gsubprocesslauncher: Clarify the behavior of set_environ()
• 781301 Stack pointer corrupted by incorrect call of NtNotifyChangeMultipleKeys
• 782336 Add additional documentation of the GResource XML format
• 782996 build: Use AM_TESTS_ENVIRONMENT rather than TESTS_ENVIRONMENT
• 783061 GApplication: Remove some unused members
• 783130 Make dbus activation sandbox-aware
• 783193 Adapt to OpenURI api change
• 783201 gdbus-codegen: Apply --output-directory to generated docs as well
• 783340 win32: port monotonic times to use QPC
• 783350 length parameter can be NULL g_data_input_stream_read_line
• 783392 incorrect (out) annotation for g_dbus_interface_info_generate_xml
• 783593 GGtkNotificationBackend should use /org/freedesktop/DBus to call Ge...
• Translation updates:
• Esperanto
• German
• Indonesian
• Kazakh
• Spanish

What is new in version 2.53.2:

• A few new number parsing functions have been added:
• g_ascii_string_to_signed
• g_ascii_string_to_unsigned
• These have better error handling than the existing ones.
• glib-mkenums now supports /*< private >*/ and /*< public >*/
• GSettings now consider XDG_DATA_HOME in addition to XDG_DATA_DIRS.
• Bugs fixed:
• 674885 type initialisation deadlock in GObject
• 698064 Add g_ptr_array_contains()
• 732000 gdatetime: Remove an unnecessary NULL pointer check
• 734946 Implement GContentType on OSX
• 741335 Possible differences in use of XDG_DATA_DIRS versus XDG base directory specification
• 748263 Use-after-free in g_dbus_connection_call_internal()
• 776876 gmodule - Various Android bug-fixes
• 777030 build error where minor() and major() cant be resolved in gio/gdbusmessage.c
• 780300 gio/gosxappinfo.c uses deprecated LSFindApplicationForInfo
• 780309 gio/tests/appinfo build fails: gdesktopappinfo.c skipped on OS X
• 781755 Avoid compiler warnings in generated marshallers code
• 781826 portal support: Read /.flatpak-info
• 781830 Fix some typos and errors in GVariant documentation
• 781847 Use-after-free under send_message_with_reply_cleanup():gdbusconnection.c:1792
• 781867 various gvfsd-wants to look in /boot/efi, causes unnecessary/inappropriate auto...
• 782068 doc: Trivial typo fixes
• 782075 gtimer: Handle gmtime() failure in g_time_val_to_iso8601()
• 782089 gdatetime: Fix overflow checks when constructing from timestamps
• 782162 Support public/private trigraph in glib-mkenums
• 782237 make check error
• 782311 inode/directory is treated as a subclass of application/octet-stream
• 782628 libmount build dependency check not requiring the right version?
• Translation updates:
• Hungarian
• Indonesian
• Spanish

What is new in version 2.52.0:

• Bug fixes:
• 779799 gdatetime test fails with tzdata 2017a
• 780032 Add missing attributes to two functions
• 780144 gio/fam: Remove leftover debug print
• Translation updates:
• French
• Friulian
• Latvian

What is new in version 2.51.2:

• Bugs fixed:
• 775309 Crash in gdbusauth
• 775468 Improve log write supports color method on windows
• 775517 Password input is echoed in the terminal
• 775765 FDO notification withdrawal backend sends wrong ID to the server
• Translation updates:
• Simplified Chinese

What is new in version 2.51.1:

• glib-compile-resources grew a --generate-phony-targets flag
• GLib now installs a valgrind suppressions file for GLib and GIO
• Bugs fixed:
• 666114 should have infrastructure to run its tests under valgrind
• 729730 GDBusMessage: Fix segfault if DEBUG_SERIALIZER is enabled
• 730932 statically assert that reasonable assumptions about enums are true
• 735731 gobject: Document behaviour of GType checking macros on NULL
• 736810 gdbus: Fix leak in g_dbus_message_print()
• 762283 GSocket - Fix race conditions on Win32 if multiple threads are waiting on cond...
• 767609 Test suite problems
• 767952 g_dbus_method_invocation_return_*, g_dbus_method_invocation_take_error: They d...
• 769672 Assert threads for testcase 642026 are sucessfully created
• 769745 gtask: Add guards for public functions
• 770175 Add command line argument to mkenums and genmarshal to write output to a file
• 770646 glib: Namespace global tapset variables by soname
• 772160 Add g_unix_mount_for() support
• 772989 Totem allows invalid urls that might cause segfault that's irrecoverable
• 773823 gio: Bump copy buffer size to 256k by default
• 774086 fix g_main_context_check declaration
• 774368 Dependency file output of resource scanner breaks Ninja
• 774421 Two minor patches
• 774520 GSocket allocates and processes control messages even if not requested
• 775309 Crash in gdbusauth
• 775468 Improve log write supports color method on windows
• 775510 testing with -fsanitize=undefined reports various undefined behaviour
• 775517 Password input is echoed in the terminal
• 775621 gmessages: Fix compilation on Android
• 775765 FDO notification withdrawal backend sends wrong ID to the server
• 775913 subprocesslauncher: potential infinite loop in verify_disposition()
• 776198 Stray semicolon after g_variant_print() function in gvariant.c
• 776586 License headers cleanup
• 777077 Use of memory after it is freed
• Translation updates:
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Czech
• Galician
• German
• Hebrew
• Kazakh
• Lithuanian
• Spanish
• Swedish

What is new in version 2.51.0:

• glib-genmarshal and glib-mkenums have gained --output options for better build system integration
• New API: g_utf8_make_valid
• Bugs fixed:
• 591603 Make _g_utf8_make_valid public
• 610969 Nice to have g_utf8_make_valid as public
• 767882 Bit shift overflow (-Wshift-overflow) warning in gparam.h
• 769135 External control for g_test_add/g_test_run
• 769630 gfile: G_FILE_MONITOR_WATCH_MOVES was actually introduced in 2.46
• 772160 Add g_unix_mount_for() support
• 772221 Take advantage of Unicode
• 773303 GApplication leaks option_strings
• Translation updates:
• French
• Galician
• German
• Hungarian
• Lithuanian
• Norwegian bokmal
• Occitan
• Polish
• Slovak
• Turkish

What is new in version 2.50.0:

• Bugs fixed:
• 771438 Turn on libmount by default on linux
• Fix the annotation for g_log_variant
• Translation updates:
• British English
• French

What is new in version 2.49.6:

• The gsettings commandline tool now has a describe command
• Bugs fixed:
• 745754 Add gcc-style dependency output to glib-compile-resources
• 769076 Fix warning: attempt to override closure->va_marshal with new marshal
• 770372 gdbus-codegen: Strip @since parameters before comparison
• Translation updates:
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Czech
• German
• Hungarian
• Polish
• Portuguese
• Spanish

What is new in version 2.49.4:

• Change the just-introduced structured logging API. The arguments of g_log_structured() had to be reordered to enable an implementation within the limits of what the standards guarantee about var args.
• Bugs fixed:
• 744456 Structured logging API
• 768936 gio doc build fails because of missing gio.xml in the tarballs
• 768963 improper va_list use in g_log_structured()
• 768968 gio/tests/socket-listener hangs since e4ee307
• Translation updates:
• Spanish

What is new in version 2.49.2:

• GMainContext and GTask have gained more systemtap probes
• Bugs fixed:
• 673101 resource compiler dependency generation not working for gen...
• 700756 GFile.new_for_path arguments misses (type filename) annotation
• 730187 glocalfileoutputstream: Fix an FD leak in an error path
• 755439 Memory leak in gdbusproxy.c
• 759813 Add more SystemTap/DTrace probes for main context and GTask
• 761810 gio: Support using GDBusObjectManagerServer at path ‘/'
• 767172 docs: Move GIO_USE_VFS to "okay for production" section
• 767218 Remove a UTF-8 ellipsis from gsignal.h
• 767245 Add filename type annotations
• 767824 Some UTC timezones incorrectly recognized on Windows 7
• Translation updates:
• Occitan

What is new in version 2.47.4:

• The GApplication documentation has been improved in several areas.
• Bugs fixed:
• 749092 gdb pretty-printers fail on Python 3 with a TypeError...
• 757374 macros: clean up "inline" mess
• 758641 Memory leak in g_dbus_proxy_new_for_bus_sync()
• 759134 Add missing checks for gnulib vasnprintf()
• 759408 Do not use uninitialized var
• 756475 Stop supporting non-POSIX getpwuid_r, getgrgid_r
• 757372 GApplication: destroy the impl on shutdown
• 728099 macros: add G_GNUC_CHECK_VERSION() for compiler checks
• 757299 glib-compile-resources: do not leak c_name
• 758553 Fix gettext use
• 758823 file monitors: reorder some code to avoid segfault
• 756214 gsettings: Don't translate ""
• 710243 Add GParamSpec object ref management annotations
• 735696 xdgmime: Finer handling for cases where mmap() is not available
• 752983 gapplication: Acquire the main context before running
• Translation updates:
• Swedish

What is new in version 2.47.3:

• The inline cleanup in the last release accidentally removed three symbols from libglib-2.0.so. It is unlikely that this will have caused any problems because these symbols were only backup symbols for definitions exported as inlines in the header files, but ABI is ABI. This release corrects only this problem.

What is new in version 2.45.6:

• Fix a test failure and a build failure

What is new in version 2.45.3:

• Improve performance of g_signal_handler_disconnect for signals with many handlers
• GDBus has gained a new call flag to allow interactive authorization
• GSettings:
• New API: g_settings_schema_list_keys
• Deprecated: g_settings_list_keys
• OS X:
• Implement GNotification
• Bump the OS X requirement to 10.9
• Windows:
• Add registry reading API
• Reimplement GAppInfo using registry information
• Bugs fixed:
• 666831 Support URI opening on W32
• 728489 property action with inverted boolean state
• 730168 Incorrect annotation on g_action_group_get_action_state_type return...
• 733325 Several regex tests fail with pcre3 8.35
• 734888 GLib has no helper functions to work with W32 Registry
• 737009 signal handler lookup doesn't scale
• 738185 Misleading language about "file name encoding" in the docs on g_env...
• 738504 Optimize UTF-8 decoding by unrolling branches and expressions
• 739122 glib not handling -1 return ("no limit") from sysconf (_SC_THREAD_S...
• 739424 gnome-shell crashes when files are added, deleted, or modified in $...
• 739616 DBus; Add new call flag to allow interactive authorization
• 740308 Add g_settings_schema_list_keys() method
• 740516 RFE: please provide an introspectible version of g_log_set_handler
• 741788 Document GSettings build system integration
• 745013 GBinding not thread safe
• 747146 Implement GNotification on OSX
• 747941 try XDG_RUNTIME_DIR/bus before falling back to X11 autolaunch (dbus...
• 748727 Filechooser dialog shows no icons for directories on W32
• 749693 GActionGroupExporter: flush queue on requests
• 750203 GNetworkMonitorNetlink hangs in user namespace
• 750322 gapplication: Make sure --help output is translated
• 750344 GTlsInteractionClass is missing from doc
• 750369 Various GBinding cleanups
• 750386 Race condition in g_io_condition_get_type
• 750399 Typo "equilalent" in glib documentation's glib-Error-Reporting.html...
• 750573 GTlsDatabaseClass is not documented
• 750918 genmarshal: silence register storage class warnings
• 751122 gsocket: avoid unnecessary g_socket_cond_wait() in _send_messages()
• 479730 The "g_key_file_set_comment" interface prepends '#' character to...
• Translation updates:
• Hungarian
• Spanish

What is new in version 2.45.1:

• The GSettings schema compiler, glib-compile-schemas has been changed to reject schema xml that has duplicate or elements. Such elements typically occur when translations are merged into the schema, with xml:lang attributes. This is not the correct way to translate schemas. Instead keep the translations in the .mo file and set the gettext-domain attribute on the element.
• The file monitoring infrastructure has been rewritten, and all backends have seen major improvements.
• The inotify backend is reporting events with less delay (no event will be delayed more than 10ms) and wakeups due to file monitoring have been significantly reduced. A CHANGES_DONE event will also be sent when new files appear.
• The poll implementation is now using the thread default main context.
• The fam implmentation is now running in the worker thread.
• The fen implementation has been removed, since it was unmaintained.
• The GSettings schema compiler, glib-compile-schemas, is more strict about rejecting schemas with xml:lang style merged translations. Schema translations should be done by specifying the gettext domain in the xml, and keeping the translations in gettext. To avoid breaking already-installed schemas, this change is only taking effect when you use the --strict option.
• The hardcoded 10-thread limit of GTask's thread pool has been removed, since it was prone to causing deadlocks. The thread pool is now allowed to grow dynamically and will shrink back over time.
• GSimpleAsyncResult has been deprecated in favor of GTask.
• The algorithm used by GAppInfo to find default handlers for mime types has been tweaked to prefer apps that handle the specific subtype over default handlers for a generic supertype.
• Bug fixes:
• 627285 inotify file monitor hardwired delay
• 631597 Segmentation fault in append_escaped_text
• 661767 merge/improve various bits of run-in-thread functionality
• 687223 cleverer GThreadPool management
• 711547 win32: silence some build warnings
• 719966 glib: Add missing (nullable) and (optional) annotations
• 726447 Possibly an error in text string
• 728663 W32: wrong stat struct is used when built with MinGW-w64
• 728669 W32: GLocalFile can't measure size of files larger than 2^32...

What is new in version 2.44.0:

• Bugs fixed:
• 730188 gsocket: Document FD ownership with g_socket_new_from_fd()
• Translations updated:
• Basque language
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Chinese (Taiwan)
• Danish
• Galician s
• Hebrew
• Indonesian
• Norwegian bokmA¥l
• Turkish

What is new in version 2.43.4:

• GType now has type declaration macros G_DECLARE_DERIVABLE_TYPE, G_DECLARE_FINAL_TYPE and G_DECLARE_INTERFACE, which significantly reduce the boilerplate needed for GObject types and interfaces.
• g_autoptr and g_auto are macros for declaring variables with automatic cleanup. They only work with gcc and clang.
• GListModel is a new interface that represents a dynamic list of GObjects.
• GListStore is a GSequence-based implementation of GListModel.
• Support thread names on OS X
• g_simple_action_set_state_hint: New function to set the state hint of GSimpleActions
• g_win32_check_windows_version: New function to check Windows version
• g_settings_schema_list_children and g_settings_schema_key_get_name are new functions to complete the GSettingsSchema API.
• Bugs fixed:
• 389585 G_DEFINE_TYPE hack for header files
• 729351 Add GListModel
• 736914 Docs: various fixes and improvements
• 741807 Add thread name support on OS X and iOS
• 741895 gwin32: Add Simple API to check whether we are on at least a v...
• 742456 object: Add g_steal_pointer() convenience function to mark own...
• 743508 polkitd fails to start: patch for gio/gcredentialsprivate.h
• 743517 GSettings API is missing some introspection functions
• 743521 GSimpleAction: add g_simple_action_set_state_hint
• 743596 G_DECLARE_DERIVABLE_TYPE() should allow additional typedef for...
• 743640 add __attribute__((cleanup)) support
• 743827 Fix build of GListModel (on Visual Studio)
• 743927 GListStore: add sorted insert function
• 743936 glib: handle unsigned modifier for long long in internal printf
• 744012 Add GMutexLocker
• 744190 Fix build on Compilers That Do Not Use inline for Plain C Code

What is new in version 2.43.3:

• add g_set_object() convenience function
• GNetworkMonitor: check if NM is not running and don't crash
• fix some races with g_mkdir_with_parents
• fix some warnings in MSVC
• avoid use of G_STRLOC in G_OBJECT_WARN_INVALID_PSPEC in order to save on static strings
• fix some content type vs. mime issues
• documentation improvements
• Bugs fixed:
• 719455 g_file_make_directory_with_parents() can erroneously throw G_IO_ERROR_EXISTS
• 732439 GSocket: avoid unnecessary g_socket_wait_condition() for blocking sockets
• 734946 Implement GContentType on OSX
• 741589 gobject: Add g_set_object() convenience function to set GObject pointers
• 741653 gnetworkmonitornm: Check if network-manager is running
• 741654 [patch] gobject: don't use G_STRLOC in G_OBJECT_WARN_INVALID_PSPEC() macro
• 741707 Gsocket blocks trying to send data
• 741788 Document GSettings build system integration
• 742548 configure.ac: stay out of autoconf's namespace
• 742851 avoid MSVC warnings in G_STMT_END
• 742972 ggettext: Include an example of setlocale() and friends in the i18n docs
• 743014 gtestutils: Add an example of using test fixtures
• Translations updated:
• Basque
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Spanish