1 <refentry id="gtk-building" revision="6 Sept 2001">
3 <refentrytitle>Compiling the GTK+ libraries</refentrytitle>
4 <manvolnum>3</manvolnum>
5 <refmiscinfo>GTK Library</refmiscinfo>
9 <refname>Compiling the GTK+ Libraries</refname>
11 How to compile GTK+ itself
14 <refsect1 id="overview">
15 <title>Building GTK+ on UNIX-like systems</title>
17 This chapter covers building and installing GTK+ on UNIX and
18 UNIX-like systems such as Linux. Compiling GTK+ on Microsoft
19 Windows is different in detail and somewhat more difficult to
20 get going since the necessary tools aren't included with
24 Before we get into the details of how to compile GTK+, we should
25 mention that in many cases, binary packages of GTK+ prebuilt for
26 your operating system will be available, either from your
27 operating system vendor or from independent sources. If such a
28 set of packages is available, installing it will get you
29 programming wih GTK+ much faster than building it yourself. In
30 fact, you may well already have GTK+ installed on your system
34 On UNIX-like systems GTK+ uses the standard GNU build system,
35 using <application>autoconf</application> for package
36 configuration and resolving portability issues,
37 <application>automake</application> for building makefiles that
38 comply with the GNU Coding Standards, and
39 <application>libtool</application> for building shared libraries
40 on multiple platforms.
43 If you are building GTK+ from the distributed source packages,
44 then won't need these tools installed; the necessary pieces
45 of the tools are already included in the source packages. But
46 it's useful to know a bit about how packages that use these
47 tools work. A source package is distributed as a
48 <literal>tar.gz</literal> file which you unpack into a
49 directory full of the source files as follows:
52 tar xvfz gtk+-2.0.0.tar.gz
55 In the toplevel of the directory that is created, there will be
56 a shell script called <filename>configure</filename> which
57 you then run to take the template makefiles called
58 <filename>Makefile.in</filename> in the package and create
59 makefiles customized for your operating system. The <filename>configure</filename>
60 script can be passed various command line arguments to determine how
61 the package is built and installed. The most commonly useful
62 argument is the <systemitem>--prefix</systemitem> argument which
63 determines where the package is installed. To install a package
64 in <filename>/opt/gtk</filename> you would run configure as:
67 ./configure --prefix=/opt/gtk
70 A full list of options can be found by running
71 <filename>configure</filename> with the
72 <systemitem>--help</systemitem> argument. In general, the defaults are
73 right and should be trusted. After you've run
74 <filename>configure</filename>, you then run the
75 <command>make</command> command to build the package and install
83 If you don't have permission to write to the directory you are
84 installing in, you may have to change to root temporarily before
85 running <literal>make install</literal>. Also, if you are
86 installing in a system directory, on some systems (such as
87 Linux), you will need to run <command>ldconfig</command> after
88 <literal>make install</literal> so that the newly installed
89 libraries will be found.
92 Several environment variables are useful to pass to set before
93 running configure. <envar>CPPFLAGS</envar> contains options to
94 pass to the C compiler, and is used to tell the compiler where
95 to look for include files. The <envar>LDFLAGS</envar> variable
96 is used in a similar fashion for the linker. Finally the
97 <envar>PKG_CONFIG_PATH</envar> environment variable contains
98 a search path that <command>pkg-config</command> (see below)
99 uses when looking for for file describing how to compile
100 programs using different libraries. If you were installing GTK+
101 and it's dependencies into <filename>/opt/gtk</filename>, you might want to set
105 CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/gtk/include"
106 LDFLAGS="-L/opt/gtk/lib"
107 PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib/pkgconfig"
108 export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH
111 You may also need to set the <envar>LD_LIBRARY_PATH</envar>
112 environment variable so the systems dynamic linker can find
113 the newly installed libraries, and the <envar>PATH</envar>
114 environment program so that utility binaries installed by
115 the various libraries will be found.
118 LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib"
119 PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
120 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH
123 <refsect1 id="dependencies">
124 <title>Dependencies</title>
126 Before you can compile the GTK+ widget toolkit, you need to have
127 various other tools and libraries installed on your
128 system. The two tools needed during the build process (as
129 differentiated from the tools used in when creating GTK+
130 mentioned above such as <application>autoconf</application>)
131 are <command>pkg-config</command> and GNU make.
137 url="http://www.freedesktop.org/software/pkgconfig/">pkg-config</ulink>
138 is a tool for tracking the compilation flags needed for
139 libraries that is used by the GTK+ libraries. (For each
140 library, a small <literal>.pc</literal> text file is installed in a standard
141 location that contains the compilation flags needed for that
142 library along with version number information.) The version
143 of <command>pkg-config</command> needed to build GTK+ is
144 mirrored in the <filename>dependencies</filename> directory
145 on the <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.0/">GTK+ FTP
151 The GTK+ makefiles will mostly work with different versions
152 of <command>make</command>, however, there tends to be
153 a few incompatibilities, so the GTK+ team recommends
154 installing <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/software/make">GNU
155 make</ulink> if you don't already have it on your system
156 and using it. (It may be called <command>gmake</command>
157 rather than <command>make</command>.)
162 Three of the libraries that GTK+ depends on are maintained by
163 by the GTK+ team: GLib, Pango, and ATK. Other libraries are
164 maintained separately.
169 The GLib library provides core non-graphical functionality
170 such as high level data types, Unicode manipulation, and
171 a object and type system to C programs. It is available
172 from the <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.0/">GTK+
178 Pango is a library for internationalized text handling. It
179 is available from the <ulink
180 url="ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.0/">GTK+ FTP site.</ulink>
185 ATK is the Accessibility Toolkit. It provides a set of generic
186 interfaces allowing accessibility technologies such as
187 screen readers to interact with a graphical user interface.
188 It is available from the <ulink
189 url="ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.0/">GTK+ FTP site.</ulink>
194 The <ulink url="http://www.gnu.org/software/libiconv/">GNU
195 libiconv library</ulink> is needed to build GLib if your
196 system doesn't have the <function>iconv()</function>
197 function for doing conversion between character
198 encodings. Most modern systems should have
199 <function>iconv()</function>.
204 The libintl library from the <ulink
205 url="http://www.gtk.org/software/gettext">GNU gettext
206 package</ulink> is needed if your system doesn't have the
207 <function>gettext()</function> functionality for handling
208 message translation databases.
214 url="ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/jpeg/">JPEG</ulink>,
215 <ulink url="http://www.libpng.org">PNG</ulink>, and
216 <ulink url="http://www.libtiff.org">TIFF</ulink> image loading libraries are needed to
217 compile GTK+. You probably already have these libraries
218 installed, but if not, the versions you need are available in
219 the <filename>dependencies</filename> directory on the the
220 <ulink url="ftp://ftp.gtk.org/pub/gtk/v2.0/dependencies/">GTK+
221 FTP site.</ulink>. (Before installing these libraries
222 from source, you should check if your operating system
223 vendor has prebuilt packages of these libraries that you
224 don't have installed.)
229 While not required for running GTK+ on X, you may want install the
230 <ulink url="http://www.freetype.org">FreeType
231 library</ulink> so that the PangoFT2 backend for Pango will
232 be built. This backend is used by the linux-fb backend for
233 GTK+ and applications that want to render independently
234 of the X display. You'll need at least version 2.0.1.
239 The libraries from the X window system are needed to build
240 Pango and GTK+. You should already have these installed on
241 your system, but it's possible that you'll need to install
242 the development environment for these libraries that your
243 operating system vendor provides. If you have a recent
244 version of the XFree86 system, such as 4.2.0, then Pango
245 and GTK+ will take advantage of the Xft and Xrender
246 libraries to provide anti-aliased and scaleable fonts in
247 a much more sophisticated fashion then the support for
253 <refsect1 id="building">
254 <title>Building and testing GTK+</title>
256 First make sure that you have the necessary external
257 dependencies installed: <command>pkg-config</command>, GNU make,
258 the JPEG, PNG, and TIFF libraries, FreeType, and, if necessary,
259 libiconv and libintl. To get detailed information about building
260 these packages, see the documentation provided with the
262 On a Linux system, it's quite likely you'll have all of these
263 installed already except for <command>pkg-config</command>.
266 Then build and install the GTK+ libraries in the order:
267 GLib, Pango, ATK, then GTK+. For each library, follow the
268 steps of <literal>configure</literal>, <literal>make</literal>,
269 <literal>make install</literal> mentioned above. If you're
270 lucky, this will all go smoothly, and you'll be ready to
271 <link linkend="gtk-compiling">start compiling your own GTK+
272 applications</link>. You can test your GTK+ installation
273 by running the <command>gtk-demo</command> program that
274 GTK+ installs. If you have the Xft library, you can turn on
275 anti-aliased fonts by setting the <envar>GDK_USE_XFT</envar>
276 environment variable.
279 GDK_USE_XFT=1 gtk-demo
282 If one of the <filename>configure</filename> scripts fails or running
283 <command>make</command> fails, look closely at the error
284 messages printed; these will often provide useful information
285 as to what went wrong. When <filename>configure</filename>
286 fails, extra information, such as errors that a test compilation
287 ran into, is found in the file <filename>config.log</filename>.
288 Looking at the last couple of hundred lines in this file will
289 frequently make clear what went wrong. If all else fails, you
290 can ask for help on the gtk-list mailing list.
291 See <xref linkend="gtk-resources"> for more information.
294 <refsect1 id="extra-configuration-options">
295 <title>Extra Configuration Options</title>
298 In addition to the normal options, the
299 <command>configure</command> script for the GTK+ library
300 supports a number of additional arguments. (Command line
301 arguments for the other GTK+ libraries are described in
302 the documentation distributed with the those libraries.)
305 <command>configure</command>
308 <arg>--disable-modules</arg>
309 <arg>--enable-modules</arg>
312 <arg>--with-included-loaders==LOADER1,LOADER2,...</arg>
315 <arg>--enable-debug=[no|minimum|yes]</arg>
318 <arg>--disable-shm</arg>
319 <arg>--enable-shm</arg>
322 <arg>--disable-xim</arg>
323 <arg>--enable-xim</arg>
326 <arg>--disable-xim-inst</arg>
327 <arg>--enable-xim-inst</arg>
330 <arg>--disable-xkb</arg>
331 <arg>--enable-xkb</arg>
334 <arg>--disable-gtk-doc</arg>
335 <arg>--enable-gtk-doc</arg>
338 <arg>--with-xinput=[no|gxi|xfree]</arg>
341 <arg>--with-gdktarget=[x11|linux-fb|win32]</arg>
344 <arg>--disable-shadowfb</arg>
345 <arg>--enable-shadowfb</arg>
351 <title><systemitem>--disable-modules</systemitem> and
352 <systemitem>--enable-modules</systemitem></title>
355 Normally GTK+ will try to build the GdkPixbuf image file
356 format loaders as little shared libraries that are loaded on
357 demand. The <systemitem>--disable-modules</systemitem>
358 argument indicates that they should all be built statically
359 into the GTK+ library instead. This is useful for
360 people who need to produce statically-linked binaries. If
361 neither <systemitem>--disable-modules</systemitem> nor
362 <systemitem>--enable-modules</systemitem> is specified, then
363 the <command>configure</command> script will try to
364 auto-detect whether shared modules work on your system.
369 <title><systemitem>--with-included-loaders</systemitem></title>
372 This option allows you to specify which image loaders you
373 want to include; for example, you might include only the PNG
374 loader to create a smaller GdkPixbuf binary.
379 <title><systemitem>--enable-debug</systemitem></title>
382 Turns on various amounts of debugging support. Setting this to 'no'
383 disables g_assert(), g_return_if_fail(), g_return_val_if_fail() and
384 all cast checks between different object types. Setting it to 'minimum'
385 disables only cast checks. Setting it to 'yes' enables
386 <link linkend="GTK-Debug-Options">runtime debugging</link>.
387 The default is 'minimum'.
388 Note that 'no' is fast, but dangerous as it tends to destabilize
389 even mostly bug-free software by changing the effect of many bugs
390 from simple warnings into fatal crashes. Thus
391 <option>--enable-debug=no</option> should <emphasis>not</emphasis>
392 be used for stable releases of GTK+.
397 <title><systemitem>--enable-explicit-deps</systemitem> and
398 <systemitem>--disable-explicit-deps</systemitem></title>
400 If <systemitem>--enable-explicit-deps</systemitem> is
401 specified then GTK+ will write the full set of libraries
402 that GTK+ depends upon into its <literal>.pc</literal> files to be used when
403 programs depending on GTK+ are linked. Otherwise, GTK+
404 only will include the GTK+ libraries themselves, and
405 will depend on system library dependency facilities to
406 bring in the other libraries.
407 By default GTK+ will disable explicit dependencies unless
408 it detects that they are needed on the system. (If you
409 specify <systemitem>--enable-static</systemitem> to force
410 building of static libraries, then explicit dependencies
411 will be written since library dependencies don't work
412 for static libraries.) Specifying
413 <systemitem>--enable-explicit-deps</systemitem> or
414 <systemitem>--enable-static</systemitem> can cause
416 problems when libraries that GTK+ depends upon change
417 their versions, and should be avoided if possible.
422 <title><systemitem>--disable-shm</systemitem> and
423 <systemitem>--enable-shm</systemitem></title>
426 These options can be used to control whether GTK+ will use shared
427 memory to communicate with the X server when possible.
428 The default is 'yes'.
433 <title><systemitem>--disable-xim</systemitem> and
434 <systemitem>--enable-xim</systemitem></title>
437 These options can be used to control whether GTK+ will
438 be compiled with support for XIM. (The X Input Method
439 extension, used for Japanese input.) The default is yes.
444 <title><systemitem>--disable-xim-inst</systemitem> and
445 <systemitem>--enable-xim-inst</systemitem></title>
448 These options determine whether GTK+ will use the
449 XIM instantiate callback.
450 The default is 'yes', unless the host system is Solaris,
451 where <function>XRegisterIMInstantiateCallback()</function>
452 seems to cause a segfault.
457 <title><systemitem>--disable-xkb</systemitem> and
458 <systemitem>--enable-xkb</systemitem></title>
461 By default the <command>configure</command> script will try
462 to auto-detect whether the XKB extension is supported by
463 the X libraries GTK+ is linked with.
464 These options can be used to explicitly control whether
465 GTK+ will support the XKB extension.
470 <title><systemitem>--disable-gtk-doc</systemitem> and
471 <systemitem>--enable-gtk-doc</systemitem></title>
474 The <application>gtk-doc</application> package is
475 used to generate the reference documentation included
476 with GTK+. By default support for <application>gtk-doc</application>
477 is disabled because it requires various extra dependencies
478 to be installed. If you have
479 <application>gtk-doc</application> installed and
480 are modifying GTK+, you may want to enable
481 <application>gtk-doc</application> support by passing
482 in <systemitem>--enable-gtk-doc</systemitem>. If not
483 enabled, pre-generated HTML files distributed with GTK+
489 <title><systemitem>--with-xinput</systemitem></title>
491 Controls whether GTK+ is built with support for the XInput
492 extension. The XInput extension provides an interface
493 to extended input devices such as graphics tablets.
494 When this support is compiled in, specially written
495 GTK+ programs can get access to subpixel positions,
496 multiple simultaneous input devices, and extra "axes"
497 provided by the device such as pressure and tilt
498 information. This is only known to work well on XFree86
499 systems, though other systems do have this extension.
500 (If <systemitem>--with-xinput=gxi</systemitem>
501 is supplied, support for an obsolete and unsupported
502 way of interacting with XInput is compiled.)
506 <title><systemitem>--with-gdktarget</systemitem></title>
509 Toggles between the supported backends for GDK.
510 The default is x11, unless the platform is Windows, in which
511 case the default is win32.
516 <title><systemitem>--disable-shadowfb</systemitem> and
517 <systemitem>--enable-shadowfb</systemitem></title>
520 Toggles shadow framebuffer support for the linux-fb target,
529 <!-- Local Variables: -->
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