GObject Introspection

GObject introspection is a middleware layer between C libraries (using GObject) and language bindings. The C library can be scanned at compile time and generate metadata files, in addition to the actual native C library. Then language bindings can read this metadata and automatically provide bindings to call into the C library.

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The GI project consists of:

  • an XML format called GIR containing introspection information in a machine parseable format
  • a Python package to create and parse the GIR format
  • a scanner to generate GIR format from C source and headers
  • a typelib similar to xpcom/msole which stores the information on disk in a binary format
  • a compiler to compile the typelib from a xml format (and vice versa)
  • C library to read the typelib, libgirepository.

Getting the code

The latest stable release is available from https://download.gnome.org/sources/gobject-introspection

GObject Introspection is stored in git and can be fetched:

git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gobject-introspection.git

You can browse the repository online here.

Reporting bugs

For a list of existing bugs and feature requests, see the issues page. You can also open an issue.

Contact

For questions or additional information, please use: