Preparation

Installing GTK 4 into Linux distributions

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

There are two ways to install GTK 4.

  • Install it from the distribution packages.
  • Build it from the source files.

Installation from the distribution packages

This is the easiest way to install. I’ve installed GTK 4 packages (version 4.14.2) on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

$ sudo apt install libgtk-4-dev

It is important to install the development files package (libgtk-4-dev). Otherwise, you can’t compile any GTK 4 based programs.

Fedora, Debian, Arch, Gentoo and OpenSUSE also have GTK 4 packages. See the website of your distribution for further information.

Package information for Arch, Debian/Ubuntu and Fedora is described in GTK website, Installing GTK from packages.

Installation from the source file

If you want to install a developing version of GTK 4, you need to build it from the source. See Compiling the GTK Libraries section in the GTK 4 API reference.

How to download this repository

There are two ways: zip and git. Downloading a zip file is the easiest way. However, if you use git and clone this repository, you can easily update your local repository by git pull command.

Download a zip file

  • Run your browser and open this repository.
  • Click on the green button with <> Code. Then a popup menu appears. Click on Download ZIP menu.
  • Then the repository data is downloaded as a zip file into your download folder.
  • Unzip the file.

Clone the repository

  • Click on the green button with the label <> Code. Then a popup menu appears. The first section is Clone with three tabs. Click HTTPS tab and click on the copy icon, which is on the right of https://github.com/ToshioCP/Gtk4-tutorial.git.
  • Run your terminal and type git clone, Ctrl+Shift+V. Then the line will be git clone https://github.com/ToshioCP/Gtk4-tutorial.git. Press the enter key.
  • A directory Gtk4-tutorial is created. It is the copy of this repository.

Examples in the tutorial

Examples are under the src directory. For example, the first example of the tutorial is pr1.c and its pathname is src/misc/pr1.c. So you don’t need to type the example codes by yourself.