The number of new features and fixes is impressive

Jan 16, 2013 07:46 GMT  ·  By

Glib, the low-level core library that forms the basis for projects such as GTK+ and GNOME and that provides data structure handling for C, portability wrappers, and interfaces, is now at version 2.35.4.

Unlike the latest stable update, which was kind of dreary, the development branch has introduced a huge number of changes and improvements.

Highlights of Glib 2.35.4:

• A new API called g_get_num_processors has been added; • A new API called g_application_command_line_get_stdin has been added; • A new GFileMonitor flag (G_FILE_MONITOR_WATCH_HARD_LINKS) has been added; • More timezone offset formats can now be parsed; • GParamSpec constructors are now introspectable and should be easier to use; • Adding interfaces after class_init has been disallowed; • gio + inotify support for hardlinks has been implemented; • Btrfs clone/reflink ioctl support in g_local_file_copy has been implemented; • glib fails stests if /etc/localtime is not properly set; • GDbus is now used via gobject-introspection instead dbus-python; • The ipv6_v4mapped test has been disabled on OpenBSD; • Support for adding interfaces after class_init has been dropped; • GCredentials should have an accessor for the process ID; • Variable overflow in utils.c test on 32-bit machine has been fixed; • local_command_line was not introspectable or annotated; • A crash in Oscars 2013 page has been fixed.

A complete list of changes, bug fixes and updates can be found in the official announcement.

Keep in mind that the Glib library needs to be compiled and you should be very careful when replacing an older version. Comprehensive compiling instructions can be found on the Gnome website or inside the achive.

Also, GLib depends on a number of other libraries and it support a large variety of extra configuration options, such as --enable-debug, --disable-gc-friendly and --enable-gc-friendly.

Download Glib 2.35.4 right now from Softpedia. Remember that this is a development version and it should NOT be installed on production machines. It is intended for testing purposes only.