ARGUMENTS

DESCRIPTION

This function performs any required precalculations, detects the supported CPU capabilities and initializes the underlying cryptographic backend. In order to free any resources taken by this call you should gnutls_global_deinit() when gnutls usage is no longer needed.

This function increments a global counter, so that gnutls_global_deinit() only releases resources when it has been called as many times as gnutls_global_init(). This is useful when GnuTLS is used by more than one library in an application. This function can be called many times, but will only do something the first time.

Note! This function is not thread safe. If two threads call this function simultaneously, they can cause a race between checking the global counter and incrementing it, causing both threads to execute the library initialization code. That could lead to a memory leak or even a crash. To handle this, your application should invoke this function after aquiring a thread mutex.

RETURNS

On success, GNUTLS_E_SUCCESS (0) is returned, otherwise a negative error code is returned.

REPORTING BUGS

Report bugs to <bug-gnutls@gnu.org>.

General guidelines for reporting bugs: http://www.gnu.org/gethelp/

GnuTLS home page: http://www.gnu.org/software/gnutls/

SEE ALSO

The full documentation for gnutls is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and gnutls programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info gnutls

should give you access to the complete manual. As an alternative you may obtain the manual from: