Installing gtk4 for testing on /opt

[StefanSalewski]

I do intent to add a few more examples for GTK4 to the Nim bindings readme, as we have only one currently.

Unfortunately Gentoo Linux still have to GTK4 for testing. But maybe one year ago I already installed gtk 3.96 on /opt, see

Testing GTK4 installed on /opt/gtk -- some programs can not load their settings

Some days ago I installed test version of GTK4 as described at https://developer.gnome.org/gtk4/3.96/gtk-building.html While gtk4-demo works mostly fine, and I can compile and run plain C test programs, parts of gtk4.demo and whole gtk4-widget-factory refuse to run with messages like $ gtk4-widget-factory (gtk4-widget-factory:2245): GLib-GIO-ERROR **: 07:25:33.489: Settings schema ‘org.gtk.gtk4.Settings.ColorChooser’ is not installed So I wonder if there is a trick to make gtk4 find it s…

I tried to remember the steps. Most difficult for me is finding the page with the instructions, but it was saved in the old forum post. Then I followed the instructions, that is

$ cat ~/gtk4_install 
rm -rf /opt/gtk
mkdir /opt/gtk

cd
rm -rf gtk
git clone https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk.git

CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/gtk/include"
LDFLAGS="-L/opt/gtk/lib64" # caution: lib64 for recent gentoo linux
PKG_CONFIG_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib64/pkgconfig" # caution: lib64 for recent gentoo linux
export CPPFLAGS LDFLAGS PKG_CONFIG_PATH

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/opt/gtk/lib64" # caution: lib64
PATH="/opt/gtk/bin:$PATH"
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH PATH

cd
cd gtk

meson --prefix /opt/gtk builddir

cd builddir
ninja
ninja install

Seems to work fine, I can launch gtk4-demo with

$ GSETTINGS_SCHEMA_DIR=/opt/gtk/share/glib-2.0/schemas /opt/gtk/bin/gtk4-demo

and it works well.

But during install I got messages like

Found ninja-1.10.0 at /usr/bin/ninja
[3/1583] Compiling C object 'gdk/wayland/cursor/4b92630@@wayland+cursor@sta/xcursor.c.o'.
cc1: warning: /opt/gtk/include: No such file or directory [-Wmissing-include-dirs]
[6/1583] Compiling C object 'gdk/wayland/cursor/4b92630@@wayland+cursor@sta/wayland-cursor.c.o'.
cc1: warning: /opt/gtk/include: No such file or directory [-Wmissing-include-dirs]

I guess that is because /opt/gtk/include does not exists before the final ninja install step.
So maybe I did something wrong?

And final question, what is the recommended strategy for linux distros about gtk4. Should distros provide already gtk4 for testing, or better not? I think some do, but gentoo does not. I do consider pushing gentoo maintainers to provide it, as manually installation is some effort.

[jtojnar (Jan Tojnar)]

I would expect the following steps to be sufficient for installing GTK under /opt:

meson --prefix /opt/gtk builddir
ninja -C builddir
ninja -C builddir install

Then, if you want to link against it, you should only need to set PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/gtk/lib/pkgconfig and the build tool should find the appropriate compiler and linker flags.

And for running apps add /opt/gtk/share to XDG_DATA_DIRS.

[StefanSalewski]

Thanks for that hint.

In the older thread which I refered at the top someone wrote:

That should work! Anyway I suggest using jhbuild or buildstream for parallel installations, so you know that >everything is set up correctly.

Is that jhbuild really a better option? And is there a description available?

[jtojnar (Jan Tojnar)]

jhbuild will take care of calling the build tools and installing the projects for you and it is still the recommend method for building GNOME projects as far as I am aware. You can read more about it on https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/Jhbuild

Buildstream aims to replace it but I have not tried it https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/BuildStream

Personally, I prefer Nix, which also allows you to do similar things but has a wider scope as a package manager: https://nixos.org/nix/