Zeuthen: Writing a C library, part 1

David Zeuthen has posted a set of guidelines for low-level library implementers. "Unless it's self-evident, all functions should have documentation explaining how parameters are managed. It is often a good idea to try to force some kind of consistency on the API. For example, in the GLib stack the general rule is that the caller owns parameters passed to a function (so the function need to take a reference or make a copy if the parameter is used after the function returns) and that the callee owns the returned parameters (so the caller needs to make a copy or increase the reference count) unless the function can be called from multiple threads (in which case the caller needs to free the returned object)."

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