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1GObject Introspection2=====================3The goal of the project is to describe the APIs and collect them in4a uniform, machine readable format.5 6GIR XML format7--------------8There's an XML format called GIR used by GObjectIntrospection.9The purpose of it is to provide a common structure to access the complete10available API that a library or other unit of code exports.11It is meant to be language agnostic using namespaces to separate12core, language or library specific functionality.13There are currently only C based tools that work on the format, but it's14meant to be usable to use in other situations, for instance to/from another15set of languages.16 17Typelib18-------19The typelib is an on-disk version of the GIR designed to be fast, memory20efficient and complete enough so that language bindings can be written21on top of it without other sources of information.22It is normally compiled from a GIR when a library/program is installed and23accessed from the language binding or another application who wishes to24use the information.25 26Tools27-----28The following tools are shipped with GObject Introspection:29 30- g-ir-scanner, a tool which generates GIR XML files by parsing headers,31  GTK-Doc comment blocks including annotations and introspecting GObject32  based libraries.33- g-ir-compiler, a typelib compiler. It converts one or more GIR files34  into one or more typelib blobs.35- g-ir-generate, an GIR generator, using the repository API. It generates36  GIR files from binary typelib which can be in a shared object, or a raw37  typelib blob.38- g-ir-annotation-tool, extracts annotations from source code files39- g-ir-doc-tool, generates API reference documentation from a GIR XML file.40 41API library42-----------43There's also a C based library called libgirepository which provides44an API to access to the typelib metadata. It also contains an API to45invoke functions, given the function info object. The implementation is46based on libffi (3.0 or higher of libffi required, can be found at47http://sourceware.org/libffi).48 49There are a number of GIR test files in tests/, and a script to do50roundtrip tests (GIR -> typelib -> GIR).51 52Helping out53-----------54The introspection framework needs a lot more work, see the ``TODO`` file.55 56Default branch renamed to ``main``57----------------------------------58 59The default development branch of GObject Introspection has been renamed60to ``main``. To update your local checkout, use::61 62    git checkout master63    git branch -m master main64    git fetch65    git branch --unset-upstream66    git branch -u origin/main67    git symbolic-ref refs/remotes/origin/HEAD refs/remotes/origin/main68 69 70Homepage71--------72https://gi.readthedocs.io/73 74Reporting bugs75--------------76Bugs should be reported in https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gobject-introspection/issues.77 78Contact79-------80:Discourse: https://discourse.gnome.org/tag/introspection81:Matrix: `#introspection:gnome.org <https://matrix.to/#/#introspection:gnome.org>`_82