Coding Guidelines/Glib Utilities

Amanda links against the Glib library because it is full of useful utilities that make C code easier to read and write. However, Amanda's minimum version required is Glib-2.2.0, which was released in late 2002. Your development system probably contains a much more recent and featureful version of the library, but you cannot use any of those new features! Consult the Glib-2.2.0 documentation before using any glib features not listed below.

Don't Use These

• G_DEFINE_TYPE doesn't work as expected in older versions - define the type manually.

Use These

Useful items from Glib:

• GMainLoop (but avoid Glib's child watch source -- Amanda provides a replacement in event.h / Amanda::MainLoop)
• threads and thread pools
• memory allocation utilities such as g_new0
• logging functions
• string-handling functions (try to use either the Amanda string functions or Glib's, but not both, for the sake of readability)
• simple XML parser
• All sorts of data types:
  • GSList (singly linked list)
  • GList (doubly linked list)
  • GHashTable
  • GPtrArray (a resizeable array of generic pointers)
  • GString