g-ir-inspect(1)

✨ g-ir-inspect ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to g-ir-inspect(1) — it lives in the General Commands Manual section, and it's your lil backstage pass to peek inside GObject-Introspection binary typelib files. it's giving microscope but for .typelib files 💅

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💖 NAME 💖

g-ir-inspect — the typelib inspection tool. that's it, that's the whole job description, and it ate 👑

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

g-ir-inspect [OPTION…] --print-shlibs NAMESPACE
g-ir-inspect [OPTION…] --print-typelibs NAMESPACE

like, pick a NAMESPACE, pick your mode, go off. the OPTION… in brackets means "you can stack options here, live your truth". ✨

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so g-ir-inspect displays information about GObject-Introspection binary typelib files. it's the nosy friend who reads everyone's diary, except the diary is a typelib and honestly it's all public info anyway.

heads up though: in GLib 2.80 and later versions, it is superseded by gi-inspect-typelib(1). yes bestie, your fave got replaced. it's not gone-gone, but the newer kid is doing the same job. check out the man page: gi-inspect-typelib(1).

and now the plot twist for Debian girlies: on Debian-derived systems, each architecture provides a version of g-ir-inspect prefixed with the DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE from dpkg-architecture(1). for example: arm-linux-gnueabihf-g-ir-inspect. iconic, right? 💅

those architecture-prefixed names use appropriate search paths for the given architecture, and you should use them when you're cross-compiling. more deets live here, go read it:

<file:///usr/share/doc/gobject-introspection/README.Debian.gz>

no cap, that file is the plug. 🫶

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• --print-shlibs — show the shared libraries that implement the NAMESPACE. who's actually doing the work behind the scenes? this tells you. 💪
• --print-typelibs — show the other typelibs that the NAMESPACE depends on. the friend group, the entourage, the whole crew. 🫂
• --version VERSION — the version of each NAMESPACE to inspect. for example, the version of Gio-2.0.typelib is 2.0. if you don't specify it, use the newest available version if there is more than one installed. it's gonna pick the freshest one for you, main character behavior fr fr ✨

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🌸 EXAMPLE 🌸

on Linux, the Gio-2.0 typelib is implemented by libgio-2.0.so.0, bestie:

$ g-ir-inspect --version 2.0 --print-shlibs Gio
shlib: libgio-2.0.so.0

see? one line. clean. slay. 😌

and it depends on GObject-2.0, GLib-2.0 and GModule-2.0:

$ g-ir-inspect --version 2.0 --print-typelibs Gio
typelib: GObject-2.0
typelib: GLib-2.0
typelib: GModule-2.0

the whole squad, listed out, no drama. 🎀

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lowkey reminder: if you're on GLib 2.80 or newer, go hang with gi-inspect-typelib(1) too. both can be your besties, there's room. 🦋

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and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 the footer on this one just quietly says g-ir-inspect(1) — no extra source, version or date tagging along down there, just the name vibing by itself at the bottom of the General Commands Manual. so consider this your cute sign-off: go inspect some typelibs, you're doing amazing, periodt. 👑✨🍓