295 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
295 lines
12 KiB
Markdown
Title: Building GTK
|
|
Slug: gtk-building
|
|
|
|
Before we get into the details of how to compile GTK, we should
|
|
mention that in many cases, binary packages of GTK prebuilt for
|
|
your operating system will be available, either from your
|
|
operating system vendor or from independent sources. If such a
|
|
set of packages is available, installing it will get you
|
|
programming with GTK much faster than building it yourself. In
|
|
fact, you may well already have GTK installed on your system already.
|
|
|
|
In order to build GTK, you will need *meson* installed on your
|
|
system. On Linux, and other UNIX-like operating systems, you will
|
|
also need *ninja*. This guide does not cover how to install these
|
|
two requirements, but you can refer to the
|
|
[Meson website](http://mesonbuild.com) for more information. The
|
|
[Ninja](https://ninja-build.org) build tool is also usable on
|
|
various operating systems, so we will refer to it in the examples.
|
|
|
|
If you are building GTK from a source distribution or from a Git
|
|
clone, you will need to use *meson* to configure the project. The
|
|
most commonly useful argument is the `--prefix` one, which determines
|
|
where the files will go once installed. To install GTK under a prefix
|
|
like `/opt/gtk` you would run Meson as:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
meson setup --prefix /opt/gtk builddir
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
Meson will create the `builddir` directory and place all the build
|
|
artefacts there.
|
|
|
|
You can get a list of all available options for the build by
|
|
running `meson configure`.
|
|
|
|
After Meson successfully configured the build directory, you then
|
|
can run the build, using Ninja:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
cd builddir
|
|
ninja
|
|
ninja install
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
If you don't have permission to write to the directory you are
|
|
installing in, you may have to change to root temporarily before
|
|
running `ninja install`.
|
|
|
|
Several environment variables are useful to pass to set before
|
|
running *meson*. `CPPFLAGS` contains options to pass to the C
|
|
compiler, and is used to tell the compiler where to look for
|
|
include files. The `LDFLAGS` variable is used in a similar fashion
|
|
for the linker. Finally the `PKG_CONFIG_PATH` environment variable
|
|
contains a search path that `pkg-config` (see below) uses when
|
|
looking for files describing how to compile programs using different
|
|
libraries. If you were installing GTK and it's dependencies into
|
|
`/opt/gtk`, you might want to set these variables as:
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/gtk/include"
|
|
LDFLAGS="-L/opt/gtk/lib"
|
|
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib/pkgconfig"
|
|
export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
You may also need to set the `LD_LIBRARY_PATH` environment variable
|
|
so the systems dynamic linker can find the newly installed libraries,
|
|
and the `PATH` environment program so that utility binaries installed
|
|
by the various libraries will be found.
|
|
|
|
```
|
|
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib"
|
|
PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
|
|
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
## Build types
|
|
|
|
Meson has different build types, exposed by the `buildtype`
|
|
configuration option. GTK enables and disables functionality
|
|
depending on the build type used when calling *meson* to
|
|
configure the build.
|
|
|
|
### Debug builds
|
|
|
|
GTK will enable debugging code paths in both the `debug` and
|
|
`debugoptimized` build types. Builds with `buildtype` set to
|
|
`debug` will additionally enable consistency checks on the
|
|
internal state of the toolkit.
|
|
|
|
It is recommended to use the `debug` or `debugoptimized` build
|
|
types when developing GTK itself. Additionally, `debug` builds of
|
|
GTK are recommended for profiling and debugging GTK applications,
|
|
as they include additional validation of the internal state.
|
|
|
|
The `debugoptimized` build type is the default for GTK if no build
|
|
type is specified when calling *meson*.
|
|
|
|
### Release builds
|
|
|
|
The `release` build type will disable debugging code paths and
|
|
additional run time safeties, like checked casts for object
|
|
instances.
|
|
|
|
The `plain` build type provided by Meson should only be used when
|
|
packaging GTK, and it's expected that packagers will provide their
|
|
own compiler flags when building GTK. See the previous section for
|
|
the list of environment variables to be used to define compiler and
|
|
linker flags. Note that with the plain build type, you are also
|
|
responsible for controlling the debugging features of GTK with
|
|
`-DG_ENABLE_DEBUG` and `-DG_DISABLE_CAST_CHECKS`.
|
|
|
|
## Dependencies
|
|
|
|
Before you can compile the GTK widget toolkit, you need to have
|
|
various other tools and libraries installed on your
|
|
system. Dependencies of GTK have their own build systems, so
|
|
you will need to refer to their own installation instructions.
|
|
|
|
A particular important tool used by GTK to find its dependencies
|
|
is `pkg-config`.
|
|
|
|
[pkg-config](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/)
|
|
is a tool for tracking the compilation flags needed for libraries
|
|
that are used by the GTK libraries. (For each library, a small `.pc`
|
|
text file is installed in a standard location that contains the
|
|
compilation flags needed for that library along with version number
|
|
information.)
|
|
|
|
Some of the libraries that GTK depends on are maintained by the
|
|
GTK team: GLib, GdkPixbuf, Pango, and GObject Introspection.
|
|
Other libraries are maintained separately.
|
|
|
|
- The GLib library provides core non-graphical functionality
|
|
such as high level data types, Unicode manipulation, and
|
|
an object and type system to C programs. It is available
|
|
from [here](https://download.gnome.org/sources/glib/).
|
|
- The [GdkPixbuf](https://git.gnome.org/browse/gdk-pixbuf/)
|
|
library provides facilities for loading images in a variety of
|
|
file formats. It is available [here](ttps://download.gnome.org/sources/gdk-pixbuf/).
|
|
- [Pango](http://www.pango.org) is a library for internationalized
|
|
text handling. It is available [here](https://download.gnome.org/sources/pango/).
|
|
- [GObject Introspection](https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GObjectIntrospection)
|
|
is a framework for making introspection data available to language
|
|
bindings. It is available [here](https://download.gnome.org/sources/gobject-introspection/).
|
|
- The [GNU libiconv](https://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/) library
|
|
is needed to build GLib if your system doesn't have the iconv()
|
|
function for doing conversion between character encodings. Most
|
|
modern systems should have iconv().
|
|
- The libintl library from the [GNU gettext](https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/)
|
|
package is needed if your system doesn't have the gettext()
|
|
functionality for handling message translation databases.
|
|
- The libraries from the X window system are needed to build
|
|
Pango and GTK. You should already have these installed on
|
|
your system, but it's possible that you'll need to install
|
|
the development environment for these libraries that your
|
|
operating system vendor provides.
|
|
- The [fontconfig](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/)
|
|
library provides Pango with a standard way of locating
|
|
fonts and matching them against font names.
|
|
- [Cairo](https://www.cairographics.org) is a graphics library that
|
|
supports vector graphics and image compositing. Both Pango and GTK
|
|
use Cairo for drawing. Note that we also need the auxiliary cairo-gobject
|
|
library.
|
|
- [libepoxy](https://github.com/anholt/libepoxy) is a library that
|
|
abstracts the differences between different OpenGL libraries. GTK
|
|
uses it for cross-platform GL support and for its own drawing.
|
|
- [Graphene](http://ebassi.github.io/graphene/) is a library that
|
|
provides vector and matrix types for 2D and 3D transformations.
|
|
GTK uses it internally for drawing.
|
|
- The [Wayland](https://wayland.freedesktop.org) libraries are needed
|
|
to build GTK with the Wayland backend.
|
|
- The [shared-mime-info](https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/shared-mime-info)
|
|
package is not a hard dependency of GTK, but it contains definitions
|
|
for mime types that are used by GIO and, indirectly, by GTK.
|
|
gdk-pixbuf will use GIO for mime type detection if possible.
|
|
For this to work, shared-mime-info needs to be installed and
|
|
`XDG_DATA_DIRS` set accordingly at configure time. Otherwise,
|
|
gdk-pixbuf falls back to its built-in mime type detection.
|
|
|
|
## Building and testing GTK
|
|
|
|
First make sure that you have the necessary external
|
|
dependencies installed: `pkg-config`, Meson, Ninja,
|
|
the JPEG, PNG, and TIFF libraries, FreeType, and, if necessary,
|
|
libiconv and libintl. To get detailed information about building
|
|
these packages, see the documentation provided with the
|
|
individual packages. On any average Linux system, it's quite likely
|
|
you'll have all of these installed already, or they will be easily
|
|
accessible through your operating system package repositories.
|
|
|
|
Then build and install the GTK libraries in the order:
|
|
GLib, Cairo, Pango, then GTK. For each library, follow the
|
|
instructions they provide, and make sure to share common settings
|
|
between them and the GTK build; if you are using a separate prefix
|
|
for GTK, for instance, you will need to use the same prefix for
|
|
all its dependencies you build. If you're lucky, this will all go
|
|
smoothly, and you'll be ready to [start compiling your own GTK
|
|
applications](#gtk-compiling). You can test your GTK installation
|
|
by running the `gtk4-demo` program that GTK installs.
|
|
|
|
If one of the projects you're configuring or building fails, look
|
|
closely at the error messages printed; these will often provide useful
|
|
information as to what went wrong. Every build system has its own
|
|
log that can help you understand the issue you're encountering. If
|
|
all else fails, you can ask for help on the
|
|
[GTK forums](#gtk-resources).
|
|
|
|
## Extra Configuration Options
|
|
|
|
In addition to the normal options provided by Meson, GTK defines various
|
|
arguments that modify what should be built. All of these options are passed
|
|
to `meson` as `-Doption=value`. Most of the time, the value can be `true` or
|
|
`false`, or `enabled`, `disabled` or `auto`.
|
|
|
|
To see a summary of all supported options and their allowed values, run
|
|
```
|
|
meson configure builddir
|
|
```
|
|
|
|
### `x11-backend`, `win32-backend`, `broadway-backend`, `wayland-backend` and `macos-backend`
|
|
|
|
Enable specific backends for GDK. If none of these options
|
|
are given, the Wayland backend will be enabled by default,
|
|
if the platform is Linux; the X11 backend will also be enabled
|
|
by default, unless the platform is Windows, in which case the
|
|
default is win32, or the platform is macOS, in which case the
|
|
default is macOS. If any backend is explicitly enabled or disabled,
|
|
no other platform will be enabled automatically.
|
|
|
|
### `vulkan`
|
|
|
|
By default, GTK will try to build with support for the Vulkan graphics
|
|
API in addition to cairo and OpenGL. This option can be used to explicitly
|
|
control whether Vulkan should be used.
|
|
|
|
### `media-gstreamer` and `media-ffmpeg`
|
|
|
|
By default, GTK will try to build the gstreamer backend for
|
|
media playback support. These options can be used to explicitly
|
|
control which media backends should be built.
|
|
|
|
### `print-cups` and `print-cpdb`
|
|
|
|
By default, GTK will try to build the cups and file print backends
|
|
if their dependencies are found. These options can be used to
|
|
explicitly control which print backends should be built.
|
|
|
|
### `cloudproviders`
|
|
|
|
This option controls whether GTK should use libcloudproviders for
|
|
supporting various Cloud storage APIs in the file chooser.
|
|
|
|
### `sysprof`
|
|
|
|
This option controls whether GTK should include support for
|
|
tracing with sysprof.
|
|
|
|
### `tracker`
|
|
|
|
This option controls whether GTK should use Tracker for search
|
|
support in the file chooser.
|
|
|
|
### `colord`
|
|
|
|
This option controls whether GTK should use colord for color
|
|
calibration support in the cups print backend.
|
|
|
|
### `documentation`, `man-pages` and `screenshots`
|
|
|
|
The *gi-docgen* package is used to generate the reference documentation
|
|
included with GTK. By default support for *gi-docgen* is disabled
|
|
because it requires various extra dependencies to be installed.
|
|
Introspection needs to be enabled, since the documentation is generated
|
|
from introspection data.
|
|
|
|
### `introspection`
|
|
|
|
Allows to disable building introspection support. This is option
|
|
is mainly useful for shortening turnaround times on developer
|
|
systems. Installed builds of GTK should always have introspection
|
|
support.
|
|
|
|
### `build-testsuite`
|
|
|
|
If you want to run the testsuite to ensure that your GTK build
|
|
works, you should enable it with this option.
|
|
|
|
### `build-tests`, `build-examples`, `build-demos`
|
|
|
|
By default, GTK will build quite a few tests, examples and demos.
|
|
While these are useful on a developer system, they are not
|
|
needed when GTK is built e.g. for a flatpak runtime. These
|
|
options allow to disable building tests and demos.
|