[java-gnome-hackers] Arrays in signal handlers

[Andrew C. <an...@op...>]

Guillaume has hit an interesting engineering problem.

There is a signal which returns an array of GFile. That doesn't seem
like a problem, except that on the C side of the signal marshaling code
we don't have anything to handle arrays.

The situation is complicated by the fact that the actual signature in
the signal is "gpointer files". Last I checked that was a typedef for
void*, but that doesn't help us because we need to detect it and turn it
into an [] of org.gnome.glib.File.

We can't even special case it, because all we have to work from in the
signal marshaling code is the GType and it is G_TYPE_POINTER.

So I'm at a bit of a loss. The primary engineering question is "how do
we get arrays as arguments in signals. The secondary problem is "how can
we figure out what to do when all we have is G_TYPE_POINTER as a type."

My best guess is to write a custom handler C side that takes the
gpointer and turns it into a GList* of GFile. But we would still need
code to handle that in the signal marshaller.

Guillaume could give more detail, I'm sure.

AfC
Sydney