GTK+ — The GTK toolkit

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 free software and part of the GNU Project. However, 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.

The official download location

• https://download.gnome.org/sources/gtk+

The official web site

• https://www.gtk.org

The official developers blog

• https://blog.gtk.org

Information about mailing lists can be found at

• http://www.gtk.org/mailing-lists.php

Building and installing

In order to build GTK+ you will need:

• a C99 compatible compiler
• Python 3
• Meson
• Ninja

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

• GLib
• GdkPixbuf
• GObject-Introspection
• Cairo
• Pango
• Epoxy
• Graphene
• ATK
• Xkb-common

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

• Xlib, and the following X extensions:
  • xrandr
  • xrender
  • xi
  • xext
  • xfixes (optional)
  • xcursor (optional)
  • xdamage (optional)
  • xcomposite (optional)
• atk-bridge-2.0

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

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

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

$ meson _build .
$ cd _build
$ ninja

You can run the test suite using:

$ meson test

And, finally, you can install GTK+ using:

$ sudo ninja install

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

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

Or online

How to report bugs

Bugs should be reported to the GNOME bug tracking system. You will need an account for yourself.

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 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

Patches should also be submitted to the bug tracking system. If the patch fixes an existing bug, add the patch as an attachment to that bug report; otherwise, enter a new bug report that describes the patch, and attach the patch to that bug report.

Patches should be in Git-formatted form. You should use git format-patch to generate them. We recommend using git-bz.

For more information on the recommended workflow, please read this wiki page.

Please, follow the CODING_STYLE document in order to conform to GTK+'s coding style when submitting a code contribution.

Release notes

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

• 3.x release notes
• 4.x release notes

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.