The cl-cffi-glib library is a Lisp binding of parts of the GLib, GObject and GIO libraries, which is the basis for projects like GTK and Pango. The library is loaded from the cl-cffi-gtk4 library for a Lisp binding to GTK 4, the deprecated cl-cffi-gtk3 library for a Lisp binding to GTK 3, and the cl-cffi-pango library for a Lisp binding to Pango.

The cl-cffi-glib library was part of the cl-cffi-gtk library and has been separated out to be used independently. The former cl-cffi-gtk library is replaced by the cl-cffi-gtk4 and cl-cffi-gtk3 libraries for GTK 4 and GTK 3, respectively.

This work is based on the cl-gtk2 library developed by Kalyanov Dmitry.

The cl-cffi-glib library is licensed under the MIT license.

The cl-cffi-glib library is ASDF installable:

(asdf:load-system :cl-cffi-glib)

After loading the library information about the installed version is available:

* (glib:cl-cffi-glib-build-info)
cl-cffi-glib build date: 13:11 4/1/2025
GLIB version: 2.82.1
Machine type: X86-64
Machine version: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-5200U CPU @ 2.20GHz
Software type: Linux
Software version: 6.11.0-21-generic
Lisp implementation type: SBCL
Lisp implementation version: 2.2.9.debian

The cl-cffi-glib library depends on the following Lisp libraries:

• cffi

  The Common Foreign Function Interface, purports to be a portable foreign function interface for Common Lisp. See common-lisp.net/project/cffi.

  Warning: You must use the version 0.22.0 or newer of the CFFI library. Older versions of CFFI are not compatible with the implementation of the cl-cffi-glib library.

• iterate

  Is a lispy and extensible replacement for the LOOP macro. See common-lisp.net/project/iterate.

• bordeaux-threads

  Lets you write multi-threaded applications in a portable way. See common-lisp.net/project/bordeaux-threads.

• closer-mop

  Closer to MOP is a compatibility layer that rectifies many of the absent or incorrect MOP features as detected by MOP Feature Tests. See common-lisp.net/project/closer/closer-mop.html

• trivial-garbage

  Provides a portable API to finalizers, weak hash-tables and weak pointers on all major CL implementations. See common-lisp.net/project/trivial-garbage.

• trivial-features

  Ensures consistent *features* across multiple Common Lisp implementations. See cliki.net/trivial-features.

The cl-cffi-glib library defines the following packages:

• glib package

  Contains the exported symbols of the Lisp binding to GLib.

• gobject package

  Contains the exported symbols of the Lisp binding to GObject.

• gio package

  Contains the exported symbols of the Lisp binding to GIO.

• glib-user package with nickname g

  Imports all symbols from the glib, gobject, and gio packages and exports the symbols for usage with the nickname g. Therefore you can access a symbol, for example, the gobject:signal-connect function in the gobject package as g:signal-connect, or the gio:application-run function in the gio package as g:application-run.

The cl-cffi-glib library comes with a testsuite. The testsuite can be performed with

(asdf:test-system :cl-cffi-glib)

or loaded with

(asdf:load-system :cl-cffi-glib/test)

The tests are included in the glib-test package, organized in suites and can be performed per suite or as a single test after loading the testsuite:

* (in-package :glib-test)
#<PACKAGE "GLIB-TEST">
* (run! 'gio-application)

Running test suite GIO-APPLICATION
 Running test G-APPLICATION-FLAGS ......
 Running test G-APPLICATION-CLASS ........
 Running test G-APPLICATION-SIGNALS ...
 Running test G-APPLICATION-ACTION-GROUP-PROPERTY ......
 Running test G-APPLICATION-APPLICATION-ID-PROPERTY .....
 Running test G-APPLICATION-FLAGS-PROPERTY .........
 Running test G-APPLICATION-INACTIVITY-TIMEOUT-PROPERTY .....
 Running test G-APPLICATION-IS-BUSY-PROPERTY ....
 Running test G-APPLICATION-IS-REGISTERED-PROPERTY ....
 Running test G-APPLICATION-IS-REMOTE-PROPERTY ...
 Running test G-APPLICATION-RESOURCE-BASE-PATH-PROPERTY .....
 Running test G-APPLICATION-ID-IS-VALID ..
 Running test G-APPLICATION-OPEN
 Did 60 checks.
    Pass: 60 (100%)
    Skip: 0 ( 0%)
    Fail: 0 ( 0%)

Unfortunately, many of the tests depend on the hardware or local environment you are using and will therefore fail. This may be fixed in the future.

The testsuite also requires the following packages:

• fiveam

  FiveAM is a framework for regression testing. It was designed with Common Lisp's interactive development model in mind. See fiveam.common-lisp.dev.

• local-time

  The local-time library is a library for manipulating date and time information in a semi-standard manner. See local-time.common-lisp.dev.

The API documentation is part of the GTK 4 API documentation.