ASCII art overview of GI's architecture

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BUILD TIME:

          +-----------------------------------------------------------+
          |   foo.c                                                   |
          |   foo.h                                                   |
          |                                                           |
          | Library sources, with type annotations                    |
          +-----------------------------------------------------------+
              |                                      |
             gcc                                 g-ir-scanner
              |                                      |
              |                                      V
              |                              +------------------------+
              |                              |    Foo.gir             |
              |                              |                        |
              |                              |    <GI-name>.gir       |
              |                              |                        |
              |                              | XML file               |
              |                              |                        |
              |                              | Invocation information |
              |                              | Required .gir files    |
              |                              | API docs               |
              |                              |                        |
              |                              +------------------------+
              |                                          |
              |                                     g-ir-compiler
              |                                          |
  DEPLOYMENT TIME:                                       |
              |                                          |
              V                                          V
        +-----------------------------+      +---------------------------+
        |   libfoo.so                 |      |    Foo.typelib            |
        |                             |      |                           |
        |                             |      | Binary version of the     |
        |  ELF file                   |      | invocation info and       |
        |                             |      | required .typelib files   |
        |  Machine code, plus         |      +---------------------------+
        | dynamic linkage information |                  A
        | (DWARF debug data, etc)     |                  |
        +-----------------------------+                  |
                     A                                   |
                     |                       +---------------------------+
                     |                       |  libgirepository.so       |
                +-----------+                |                           |
                | libffi.so |                |  Can read typelibs and    |
                |           |<-------+------>|  present them in a        |
                +-----------+        |       |  libffi-based way         |
                                     |       |                           |
                                     |       +---------------------------+
                                     |
                                     |
                           +----------------------------+
                           | Specific language bindings |
                           +----------------------------+