Installing GTK 4 into Linux distributions

This section describes how to install GTK 4 into Linux distributions.

This tutorial is without any warranty. If you want to install GTK 4 to your computer, do it at your own risk.

The information in this section is the one on April/27/2022. The words ‘at present’ and/or ‘now’ in this section means ‘April/27/2022’.

There are three possible way to install GTK 4.

Install it from the distribution packages.
Build it from the source file.
Install a GNOME 40 distribution with the GNOME Boxes.

Installation from the distribution packages

The first way is easy to install. It is a recommended way. I’ve installed GTK 4 packages in Ubuntu 21.04. (Now, my Ubuntu version is 21.10).

$ sudo apt-get install libgtk-4-bin libgtk-4-common libgtk-4-dev libgtk-4-doc

Fedora, Arch, Debian and OpenSUSE are also possible. See Installing GTK from packages. The following table shows the distributions which support GTK 4.

Distribution	version	GTK 4	GNOME 40
Fedora	36	4.4.2	GNOME 42
Ubuntu	22.04lts	4.4	GNOME 41(4.6.2)
Debian	bookworm(testing)	4.6.5	GNOME 42
Arch	rolling release	4.6.5	GNOME 42
Gentoo	rolling release	4.6.5	GNOME 42
OpenSUSE	Tumbleweed(rolling release)	4.6.5	GNOME 42

If you’ve installed GTK 4 from the packages, you don’t need to read the rest of this section.

Installation from the source file

If your operating system doesn’t have GTK 4 packages, you need to build it from the source. Or, if you want the latest version of GTK 4 (4.6.3), you also need to build it from the source.

I installed GTK 4 from the source in January 2021. So, the following information is old, especially for the version of each software. For the latest information, see GTK API Reference, Building GTK.

Prerequisites for GTK 4 installation

Linux operating system. For example, Ubuntu 20.10 or 20.04LTS. Other distributions might be OK.
Packages for development such as gcc, meson, ninja, git, wget and so on.
Dev package is necessary for each software below.

Installation target

I installed GTK 4 under the directory $HOME/local. This is a private user area.

If you want to install it in the system area, /opt/gtk4 is one of good choices. GTK API Reference, Building GTK gives an installation example to /opt/gtk4.

Don’t install it to /usr/local which is the default. It is used by Ubuntu applications which are not build on GTK 4. Therefore, the risk is high and probably bad things will happen. Actually I did it and I needed to reinstall Ubuntu.

Installation to Ubuntu 20.10

Most of the necessary libraries are included by Ubuntu 20.10. Therefore, they can be installed with apt-get command. You don’t need to install them from the source tarballs. You can skip the subsections below about prerequisite library installation (GLib, Pango, GdkPixbuf and GTK-doc).

GLib installation

If your Ubuntu is 20.04LTS, you need to install prerequisite libraries from the tarballs. Check the version of your library and if it is lower than the necessary version, install it from the source.

For example,

$ pkg-config --modversion glib-2.0
2.64.6

The necessary version is 2.66.0 or higher. Therefore, the example above shows that you need to install GLib.

I installed 2.67.1 which was the latest version at that time (January 2021). Download GLib source files from the repository, then decompress and extract files.

$ wget https://download.gnome.org/sources/glib/2.67/glib-2.67.1.tar.xz
$ tar -Jxf glib-2.67.1.tar.xz

Some packages are required to build GLib. You can find them if you run meson.

$ meson --prefix $HOME/local _build

Use apt-get and install the prerequisites. For example,

$ sudo apt-get install -y  libpcre2-dev libffi-dev

After that, compile GLib.

$ rm -rf _build
$ meson --prefix $HOME/local _build
$ ninja -C _build
$ ninja -C _build install

Set several environment variables so that the GLib libraries installed can be used by build tools. Make a text file below and save it as env.sh

# compiler
CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/local/include"
LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/local/lib"
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/local/lib/pkgconfig:$HOME/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig"
export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH
# linker
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/"
PATH="$HOME/local/bin:$PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH
# gsetting
export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$HOME/local/share/glib-2.0/schemas

Then, use . (dot) or source command to include these commands to the current bash.

$ . env.sh

$ source env.sh

This command carries out the commands in env.sh and changes the environment variables above in the current shell.

Pango installation

Download and untar.

$ wget https://download.gnome.org/sources/pango/1.48/pango-1.48.0.tar.xz
$ tar -Jxf pango-1.48.0.tar.xz

Try meson and check the required packages. Install all the prerequisites. Then, compile and install Pango.

$ meson --prefix $HOME/local _build
$ ninja -C _build
$ ninja -C _build install

It installs Pango-1.0.gir under $HOME/local/share/gir-1.0. If you installed Pango without --prefix option, then it would be located at /usr/local/share/gir-1.0. This directory (/usr/local/share) is used by applications. They find the directory by the environment variable XDG_DATA_DIRS. It is a text file which keep the list of ‘share’ directories like /usr/share, usr/local/share and so on. Now $HOME/local/share needs to be added to XDG_DATA_DIRS, or error will occur in the later compilation.

$ export XDG_DATA_DIRS=$HOME/local/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS

GdkPixbuf and GTK-Doc installation

Download and untar.

$ wget https://download.gnome.org/sources/gdk-pixbuf/2.42/gdk-pixbuf-2.42.2.tar.xz
$ tar -Jxf gdk-pixbuf-2.42.2.tar.xz
$ wget https://download.gnome.org/sources/gtk-doc/1.33/gtk-doc-1.33.1.tar.xz
$ tar -Jxf gtk-doc-1.33.1.tar.xz

Same as before, install prerequisite packages, then compile and install them.

The installation of GTK-Doc put gtk-doc.pc under $HOME/local/share/pkgconfig. This file is used by pkg-config, which is one of the build tools. The directory needs to be added to the environment variable PKG_CONFIG_PATH

$ export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/local/share/pkgconfig:$PKG_CONFIG_PATH"

GTK 4 installation

If you want the latest development version of GTK 4, use git and clone the repository.

$ git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/gnome/gtk.git

If you want a stable version of GTK 4, then download it from GNOME source website. The latest version is 4.3.1 (13/June/2021).

Compile and install it.

$ meson --prefix $HOME/local _build
$ ninja -C _build
$ ninja -C _build install

If you want to know more information, refer to GTK 4 API Reference, Building GTK.

Modify env.sh

Because environment variables disappear when you log out, you need to add them again. Modify env.sh.

# compiler
CPPFLAGS="-I$HOME/local/include"
LDFLAGS="-L$HOME/local/lib"
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$HOME/local/lib/pkgconfig:$HOME/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/pkgconfig:
$HOME/local/share/pkgconfig"
export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH
# linker
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="$HOME/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/"
PATH="$HOME/local/bin:$PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH
# gir
XDG_DATA_DIRS=$HOME/local/share:$XDG_DATA_DIRS
export XDG_DATA_DIRS
# gsetting
export GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=$HOME/local/share/glib-2.0/schemas
# girepository-1.0
export GI_TYPELIB_PATH=$HOME/local/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/girepository-1.0

Include this file by . (dot) command before using GTK 4 libraries.

You may think you can add them in your .profile. But it’s a wrong decision. Never write them to your .profile. The environment variables above are necessary only when you compile and run GTK 4 applications. Otherwise it’s not necessary. If you changed the environment variables above and run GTK 3 applications, it probably causes serious damage.

Compiling GTK 4 applications

Before you compile GTK 4 applications, define environment variables above.

$ . env.sh

After that you can compile them without anything. For example, to compile sample.c, type the following.

$ gcc `pkg-config --cflags gtk4` sample.c `pkg-config --libs gtk4`

To know how to compile GTK 4 applications, refer to the section 3 (GtkApplication and GtkApplicationWindow) and after.

Installing Fedora 34 with GNOME Boxes

The last part of this section is about GNOME 40 and GNOME Boxes. GNOME 40 is a new version of GNOME desktop system. And GTK 4 is installed in the distribution. See GNOME 40 website first.

However, GNOME 40 is not necessary to compile and run GTK 4 applications.

There are seven choices at present.

GNOME OS
Arch Linux
Gentoo Linux
Fedora 36
openSUSE Tumbleweed
Ubuntu 22.04
Debian bookworm

I’ve installed Fedora 34 with GNOME Boxes. My OS was Ubuntu 21.04 at that time. GNOME Boxes creates a virtual machine in Ubuntu and Fedora will be installed to that virtual machine.

The instruction is as follows.

Download Fedora 34 iso file. There is an link at the end of GNOME 40 website.
Install gnome-boxes with apt-get command.

$ sudo apt-get install gnome-boxes

Run GNOME Boxes.
Click on + button on the top left corner and launch a box creation wizard by clicking Create a Virtual Machine .... Then a dialog appears. Click on Operationg System Image File and select the iso file you have downloaded.
Then, the Fedora’s installer is executed. Follow the instructions by the installer. At the end of the installation, the installer instructs to reboot the system. Click on the right of the title bar and select reboot or shutdown.
Your display is back to the initial window of GNOME Boxes, but there is a button Fedora 34 Workstation on the upper left of the window. Click on the button then Fedora will be executed.
A setup dialog appears. Setup Fedora according to the wizard.

Now you can use Fedora. It includes GTK 4 libraries already. But you need to install the GTK 4 development package. Use dnf to install gtk4.x86_64 package.

$ sudo dnf install gtk4.x86_64

GTK 4 compilation test

You can test the GTK 4 development packages by compiling files which are based on GTK 4. I’ve tried compiling tfe text editor, which is written in section 21.

Run Firefox.
Open this website (Gtk4-Tutorial).
Click on the green button labeled Code.
Select Download ZIP and download the codes from the repository.
Unzip the file.
Change your current directory to src/tfe7.
Compile it.

$ meson _build
bash: meson: command not found...
Install package 'meson' to provide command 'meson'? [N/y] y

 * Waiting in queue...
The following packages have to be installed:
 meson-0.56.2-2.fc34.noarch    High productivity build system
 ninja-build-1.10.2-2.fc34.x86_64    Small build system with a focus on speed
 vim-filesystem-2:8.2.2787-1.fc34.noarch    VIM filesystem layout
Proceed with changes? [N/y] y

... ...
... ...

The Meson build system
Version: 0.56.2

... ...
... ...

Project name: tfe
Project version: undefined
C compiler for the host machine: cc (gcc 11.0.0 "cc (GCC) 11.0.0 20210210 (Red Hat 11.0.0-0)")
C linker for the host machine: cc ld.bfd 2.35.1-38
Host machine cpu family: x86_64
Host machine cpu: x86_64
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (1.7.3)
Run-time dependency gtk4 found: YES 4.2.0
Found pkg-config: /usr/bin/pkg-config (1.7.3)
Program glib-compile-resources found: YES (/usr/bin/glib-compile-resources)
Program glib-compile-schemas found: YES (/usr/bin/glib-compile-schemas)
Program glib-compile-schemas found: YES (/usr/bin/glib-compile-schemas)
Build targets in project: 4

Found ninja-1.10.2 at /usr/bin/ninja

$ ninja -C _build
ninja: Entering directory `_build'
[12/12] Linking target tfe

$ ninja -C _build install
ninja: Entering directory `_build'
[0/1] Installing files.
Installing tfe to /usr/local/bin
Installation failed due to insufficient permissions.
Attempting to use polkit to gain elevated privileges...
Installing tfe to /usr/local/bin
Installing /home/<username>/Gtk4-tutorial-main/src/tfe7/com.github.ToshioCP.tfe.gschema.xml to /usr/local/share/glib-2.0/schemas
Running custom install script '/usr/bin/glib-compile-schemas /usr/local/share/glib-2.0/schemas/'

Execute it.

$ tfe

Then, the window of tfe text editor appears. The compilation and execution have succeeded.