GTK is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces.
Go to file
Benjamin Otte 96b800fa0c gl: Add buffer implementation using persistent mapping
If glBufferStorage() is available, we can replace our usage of
glBufferSubData() with persistently mapped storage via
glMappedBufferRange().

This has 1 disadvantage:

1. It's not supported everywhere, it requires GL 4.4 or
   GL_EXT_buffer_storage. But every GPU of the last 10 years should
   implement it. So we check for it and keep the old code.
   The old code can also be forced via GDK_GL_DISABLE=buffer-storage.

But it has 2 advantages:

1. It is what Vulkan does, so it unifies the two renderers' buffer
   handling.

2. It is a significant performance boost in use cases with large vertex
   buffers. Those are pretty rare, but do happen with lots of text at a
   small font size. An example would be a small font in a maximized VTE
   terminal or the overview in gnome-text-editor.

A custom benchmark tailored for this problem can be created with:

  tests/rendernode-create-tests 1000000 text.node

This creates a node file called "text.node" that draws 1 million text
nodes.
(Creating that test takes a minute or so. A smaller number may be useful
on less powerful hardware than my Intel Tigerlake laptop.)
The difference can then be compared via:

  tools/gtk4-rendernode-tool benchmark --runs=20 text.node
and
  GDK_GL_DISABLE=buffer-storage tools/gtk4-rendernode-tool benchmark --runs=20 text.node

For my laptop, the difference is:
before: 1.1s
after:  0.8s

Related: !7021
2024-03-16 20:55:26 +01:00
.gitlab/issue_templates Update references to master in the repository 2021-11-29 17:37:49 -05:00
.gitlab-ci ci: Drop some unnecessary packages 2024-03-15 13:06:54 -04:00
build-aux build: Move and rename demo_conf.h header 2024-01-18 20:20:58 -05:00
demos demos: Make the maze demo non-resizable 2024-03-16 10:08:37 -04:00
docs Merge branch 'debug-cleanup' into 'main' 2024-03-16 14:41:16 +00:00
examples examples: Use #pragma once consistently 2023-12-20 10:29:45 -05:00
gdk gl: Add buffer implementation using persistent mapping 2024-03-16 20:55:26 +01:00
gsk gl: Add buffer implementation using persistent mapping 2024-03-16 20:55:26 +01:00
gtk Merge branch 'debug-cleanup' into 'main' 2024-03-16 14:41:16 +00:00
modules printing: Avoid accessing freed printers 2024-03-13 11:17:42 +01:00
po Update German translation 2024-03-14 20:36:56 +00:00
subprojects Revert "meson: Move libsass/sassc subprojects to use wrapdb" 2023-09-19 21:28:28 +02:00
tests testdmabuf: Include gdkdmabuffourccprivate.h 2024-02-13 14:15:32 +01:00
testsuite testsuite: Run the plain test without any args 2024-03-16 14:53:22 +01:00
tools Don't forget to unrealize the renderer 2024-03-08 20:44:42 -05:00
.clang-format clang-format: The link to code formatting has changed 2024-02-12 15:51:41 +01:00
.editorconfig Add editorconfig file 2021-10-28 18:17:02 +01:00
.flake8 Add flake8 configuration file 2023-07-05 10:12:20 +01:00
.gitignore .gitignore: Ignore .flatpak-builder directory 2023-05-15 13:08:56 -07:00
.gitlab-ci.yml ci: Install ninja from wheel for Big Sur runner 2024-03-11 21:30:37 +01:00
AUTHORS AUTHORS: Some updates 2023-08-02 20:14:02 +00:00
CONTRIBUTING.md docs: Update link to GitLab documentation 2024-01-15 21:41:15 +01:00
COPYING Change FSF Address 2012-02-27 17:06:11 +00:00
gtk.doap DOAP: Replace non-existing mailing lists with GNOME Discourse URL 2023-09-19 18:21:17 +02:00
gtk.supp Fix some typos in gtk.supp 2023-06-09 08:28:36 -04:00
lsan.supp ci: Ignore more leaks in dependencies 2023-06-27 22:08:22 -04:00
make-pot Add new printf patterns to make-pot 2022-11-05 11:23:53 +01:00
make-release.sh Use software rendering for testsuite runs 2024-01-25 16:25:26 -05:00
meson_options.txt Drop ffmpeg support 2024-02-09 22:32:58 -05:00
meson.build Post-release version bump 2024-03-12 08:12:52 -04:00
NEWS Post-release version bump 2024-03-12 08:12:52 -04:00
NEWS.pre-1.0 Split NEWS 2018-01-10 19:06:45 -05:00
NEWS.pre-2.0 Split NEWS 2018-01-10 19:06:45 -05:00
NEWS.pre-3.0 Split NEWS 2018-01-10 19:06:45 -05:00
NEWS.pre-4.0 Split NEWS for pre-4.0 changes 2021-01-19 10:40:09 +01:00
README.md README: Some updates 2023-08-04 22:30:13 -04:00

GTK — The GTK toolkit

Build status

General information

GTK is a multi-platform toolkit for creating graphical user interfaces. Offering a complete set of widgets, GTK is suitable for projects ranging from small one-off projects to complete application suites.

GTK is a free and open-source software project. The licensing terms for GTK, the GNU LGPL, allow it to be used by all developers, including those developing proprietary software, without any license fees or royalties.

GTK is hosted by the GNOME project (thanks!) and used by a wide variety of applications and projects.

The official download location

The official web site

The official developers blog

Discussion forum

Nightly documentation can be found at

Nightly flatpaks of our demos can be installed from the GNOME Nightly repository:

  • flatpak remote-add --if-not-exists gnome-nightly https://nightly.gnome.org/gnome-nightly.flatpakrepo
  • flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gtk.Demo4
  • flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gtk.WidgetFactory4
  • flatpak install gnome-nightly org.gtk.IconBrowser4

Building and installing

In order to build GTK you will need:

You will also need various dependencies, based on the platform you are building for:

If you are building the Wayland backend, you will also need:

  • Wayland-client
  • Wayland-protocols
  • Wayland-cursor
  • Wayland-EGL

If you are building the X11 backend, you will also need:

  • Xlib, and the following X extensions:
    • xrandr
    • xrender
    • xi
    • xext
    • xfixes
    • xcursor
    • xdamage
    • xcomposite

Once you have all the necessary dependencies, you can build GTK by using Meson:

$ meson setup _build
$ meson compile -C_build

You can run the test suite using:

$ meson test -C_build

And, finally, you can install GTK using:

$ sudo meson install -C_build

Complete information about installing GTK and related libraries can be found in the file:

docs/reference/gtk/html/gtk-building.html

Or online

Building from git

The GTK sources are hosted on gitlab.gnome.org. The main development branch is called main, and stable branches are named after their minor version, for example gtk-4-10.

How to report bugs

Bugs should be reported on the issues page.

In the bug report please include:

  • Information about your system. For instance:

    • which version of GTK you are using
    • what operating system and version
    • for Linux, which distribution
    • if you built GTK, the list of options used to configure the build

    And anything else you think is relevant.

  • How to reproduce the bug.

    If you can reproduce it with one of the demo applications that are built in the demos/ subdirectory, on one of the test programs that are built in the tests/ subdirectory, that will be most convenient. Otherwise, please include a short test program that exhibits the behavior. As a last resort, you can also provide a pointer to a larger piece of software that can be downloaded.

  • If the bug was a crash, the exact text that was printed out when the crash occurred.

  • Further information such as stack traces may be useful, but is not necessary.

Contributing to GTK

Please, follow the contribution guide to know how to start contributing to GTK.

If you want to support GTK financially, please consider donating to the GNOME project, which runs the infrastructure hosting GTK.

Release notes

The release notes for GTK are part of the migration guide in the API reference. See:

Licensing terms

GTK is released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License, version 2.1 or, at your option, any later version, as published by the Free Software Foundation.

Please, see the COPYING file for further information.

GTK includes a small number of source files under the Apache license:

  • A fork of the roaring bitmaps implementation in gtk/roaring
  • An adaptation of timsort from python in gtk/timsort