gtk2/docs/reference/gtk/building.sgml
2018-02-24 21:34:40 -05:00

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<refentry id="gtk-building">
<refmeta>
<refentrytitle>Compiling the GTK+ libraries</refentrytitle>
<manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
<refmiscinfo>GTK Library</refmiscinfo>
</refmeta>
<refnamediv>
<refname>Compiling the GTK+ Libraries</refname>
<refpurpose>
How to compile GTK+ itself
</refpurpose>
</refnamediv>
<refsect1 id="overview">
<title>Building GTK+</title>
<para>
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.
</para>
<para>
In order to build GTK+, you will need <application>meson</application>
installed on your system. On Linux, and other UNIX-like operating
systems, you will also need <application>ninja</application>. This
guide does not cover how to install these two requirements, but you
can refer to the <ulink url="http://mesonbuild.com">Meson website</ulink>
for more information. The <ulink url="https://ninja-build.org">Ninja</ulink>
build tool is also usable on various operating systems, so we will
refer to it in the examples.
</para>
<para>
If you are building GTK+ from a source distribution or from a Git
clone, you will need to use <application>meson</application> to
configure the project. The most commonly useful argument is the
<systemitem>--prefix</systemitem> one, which determines where the
files will go once installed. To install GTK+ under a prefix
like <filename>/opt/gtk</filename> you would run Meson as:
</para>
<informalexample>
<programlisting>
meson --prefix /opt/gtk builddir
</programlisting>
</informalexample>
<para>
Meson will create the <filename>builddir</filename> directory and
place all the build artefacts there.
</para>
<para>
You can get a list of all available options for the build by
running <application>meson configure</application>.
</para>
<para>
After Meson successfully configured the build directory, you then
can run the build, using Ninja:
</para>
<informalexample>
<programlisting>
cd builddir
ninja
ninja install
</programlisting>
</informalexample>
<para>
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 <literal>ninja install</literal>.
</para>
<para>
Several environment variables are useful to pass to set before
running configure. <envar>CPPFLAGS</envar> contains options to
pass to the C compiler, and is used to tell the compiler where
to look for include files. The <envar>LDFLAGS</envar> variable
is used in a similar fashion for the linker. Finally the
<envar>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</envar> environment variable contains
a search path that <command>pkg-config</command> (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 <filename>/opt/gtk</filename>, you
might want to set these variables as:
</para>
<programlisting>
CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/gtk/include"
LDFLAGS="-L/opt/gtk/lib"
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib/pkgconfig"
export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH
</programlisting>
<para>
You may also need to set the <envar>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</envar>
environment variable so the systems dynamic linker can find
the newly installed libraries, and the <envar>PATH</envar>
environment program so that utility binaries installed by
the various libraries will be found.
</para>
<programlisting>
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib"
PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH
</programlisting>
</refsect1>
<refsect1 id="dependencies">
<title>Dependencies</title>
<para>
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.
</para>
<para>
A particular important tool used by GTK+ to find its dependencies
is <application>pkg-config</application>.
</para>
<para>
<ulink url="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/pkg-config/">pkg-config</ulink>
is a tool for tracking the compilation flags needed for
libraries that are used by the GTK+ libraries. (For each
library, a small <literal>.pc</literal> text file is installed
in a standard location that contains the compilation flags
needed for that library along with version number information.)
</para>
<para>
Some of the libraries that GTK+ depends on are maintained by
by the GTK+ team: GLib, GdkPixbuf, Pango, ATK and GObject Introspection.
Other libraries are maintained separately.
</para>
<itemizedlist>
<listitem>
<para>
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 <ulink url="https://download.gnome.org/sources/glib/">here</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <ulink url="https://git.gnome.org/browse/gdk-pixbuf/">GdkPixbuf library</ulink>
provides facilities for loading images in a variety of file formats.
It is available <ulink url="https://download.gnome.org/sources/gdk-pixbuf/">here</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="http://www.pango.org">Pango</ulink> is a library
for internationalized text handling. It is available
<ulink url="https://download.gnome.org/sources/pango/">here</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
ATK is the Accessibility Toolkit. It provides a set of generic
interfaces allowing accessibility technologies such as
screen readers to interact with a graphical user interface.
It is available
<ulink url="https://download.gnome.org/sources/atk/">here</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/GObjectIntrospection">Gobject Introspection</ulink>
is a framework for making introspection data available to
language bindings. It is available
<ulink url="https://download.gnome.org/sources/gobject-introspection/">here</ulink>.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
<itemizedlist>
<title>External dependencies</title>
<listitem>
<para>
The <ulink url="https://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/">GNU
libiconv library</ulink> is needed to build GLib if your
system doesn't have the <function>iconv()</function>
function for doing conversion between character
encodings. Most modern systems should have
<function>iconv()</function>.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The libintl library from the <ulink
url="https://www.gnu.org/software/gettext/">GNU gettext
package</ulink> is needed if your system doesn't have the
<function>gettext()</function> functionality for handling
message translation databases.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
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.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <ulink url="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/fontconfig/">fontconfig</ulink>
library provides Pango with a standard way of locating
fonts and matching them against font names.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="https://www.cairographics.org">Cairo</ulink>
is a graphics library that supports vector graphics and image
compositing. Both Pango and GTK+ use Cairo for drawing.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="https://github.com/anholt/libepoxy">libepoxy</ulink>
is a library that abstracts the differences between different
OpenGL libraries. GTK+ uses it for cross-platform GL support
and for its own drawing.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
<ulink url="https://github.com/anholt/libepoxy">Graphene</ulink>
is a library that provides vector and matrix types for 2D and
3D transformations. GTK+ uses it internally for drawing.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <ulink url="https://wayland.freedesktop.org">Wayland</ulink> libraries
are needed to build GTK+ with the Wayland backend.
</para>
</listitem>
<listitem>
<para>
The <ulink url="https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/shared-mime-info">shared-mime-info</ulink>
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
<envar>XDG_DATA_DIRS</envar> set accordingly at configure time.
Otherwise, gdk-pixbuf falls back to its built-in mime type detection.
</para>
</listitem>
</itemizedlist>
</refsect1>
<refsect1 id="building">
<title>Building and testing GTK+</title>
<para>
First make sure that you have the necessary external
dependencies installed: <command>pkg-config</command>, 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.
</para>
<para>
Then build and install the GTK+ libraries in the order:
GLib, Cairo, Pango, ATK, 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 <link linkend="gtk-compiling">start compiling
your own GTK+ applications</link>. You can test your GTK+ installation
by running the <command>gtk4-demo</command> program that
GTK+ installs.
</para>
<para>
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-list mailing list.
See <xref linkend="gtk-resources"/> for more information.
</para>
</refsect1>
<refsect1 id="extra-configuration-options">
<title>Extra Configuration Options</title>
<para>
In addition to the normal options provided by Meson, GTK+ defines
various arguments that modify what should be built.
<cmdsynopsis>
<command>meson</command>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Ddocumentation=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Ddocumentation=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dman-pages=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dman-pages=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dprint-backends=all</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dprint-backends=none</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dprint-backends=cups,lpr,...</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dcolord=yes</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dcolord=no</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dcolord=auto</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dvulkan=yes</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dvulkan=no</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dvulkan=auto</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dx11-backend=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dx11-backend=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dcloudproviders=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dcloudproviders=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dxinerama=yes</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dxinerama=no</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dxinerama=auto</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dwin32-backend=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dwin32-backend=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dquartz-backend=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dquartz-backend=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dbroadway-backend=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dbroadway-backend=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dwayland-backend=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dwayland-backend=false</arg>
</group>
<sbr/>
<group>
<arg choice="plain">-Dintrospection=true</arg>
<arg choice="plain">-Dintrospection=false</arg>
</group>
</cmdsynopsis>
</para>
<formalpara>
<title><systemitem>xinerama</systemitem></title>
<para>
By default GTK+ will try to link against the Xinerama libraries
if they are found. This options can be used to explicitly control
whether Xinerama should be used.
</para>
</formalpara>
<formalpara>
<title><systemitem>documentation</systemitem> and
<systemitem>man-pages</systemitem></title>
<para>
The <application>gtk-doc</application> package is
used to generate the reference documentation included
with GTK+. By default support for <application>gtk-doc</application>
is disabled because it requires various extra dependencies
to be installed. If you have
<application>gtk-doc</application> installed and
are modifying GTK+, you may want to enable
<application>gtk-doc</application> support by passing
in <systemitem>documentation</systemitem>.
</para>
<para>
Additionally, some tools provided by GTK+ have their own
manual pages generated using a similar set of dependencies;
if you have <application>xsltproc</application> then you
can generate manual pages by passing <systemitem>man-pages</systemitem>
when configuring the build.
</para>
</formalpara>
<formalpara>
<title><systemitem>print-backends</systemitem></title>
<para>
By default, GTK+ will try to build various print backends if
their dependencies are found. This option can be used to
explicitly control which print backends should be built.
</para>
</formalpara>
<formalpara>
<title><systemitem>x11-backend</systemitem>,
<systemitem>win32-backend</systemitem>,
<systemitem>quartz-backend</systemitem>,
<systemitem>broadway-backend</systemitem> and
<systemitem>wayland-backend</systemitem></title>
<para>
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 quartz. If any backend is explicitly enabled or disabled,
no other platform will be enabled automatically.
</para>
</formalpara>
<formalpara>
<title><systemitem>introspection</systemitem></title>
<para>
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.
</para>
</formalpara>
<formalpara>
<title><systemitem>build-tests</systemitem>,
<systemitem>install-tests</systemitem>,
<systemitem>demos</systemitem></title>
<para>
By default, GTK+ will build quite a few tests 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.
</para>
</formalpara>
</refsect1>
</refentry>
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