Setting up GTK for Windows

GTK and Windows

Note: These instructions are intended for developers wanting to create Windows applications based on GTK, not for end-users. On Windows, GTK applications are typically bundled with GTK already, so end-users do not need to worry about how to install GTK itself.

There are various methods to install GTK on Windows development machines.

MSYS2
This method is based on the packages provided by MSYS2, which provides a UNIX-like environment for Windows. Both of these repositories also provide packages for a large number of other useful open source libraries.
gvsbuild
This method provides scripts to build the GTK stack from source and outputs libraries and tools that can be consumed by Visual Studio or Meson based projects.

We assume that you are using Windows 7 or later. For older versions of Windows, you will need to do a custom build of older versions of GLib and GTK.

Using GTK from MSYS2 packages

Installation

The MSYS2 project provides a UNIX-like development environment for Windows. It provides packages for many software applications and libraries, including the GTK stack. If you prefer developing using Visual Studio, you should use gvsbuild instead.

In MSYS2 packages are installed using the pacman package manager.

Note: in the following steps, we will assume you’re using a 64-bit Windows. Therefore, the package names include the x86_64 architecture identifier. If you’re using a 32-bit Windows, please adapt the instructions below using the i686 architecture identifier.

Step 1.: Download the MSYS2 installer that matches your platform and follow the installation instructions.

Step 2.: Install GTK4 and its dependencies. Open a MSYS2 shell, and run:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gtk4

If you want to develop with GTK3, run:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-gtk3

Step 3. (optional): If you want to develop a GTK application in C, C++, Fortran, etc, you’ll need a compiler like GCC and its toolchain:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-toolchain base-devel

If you want to develop a GTK application in Python, you need to install the Python bindings:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-python-gobject

If you want to develop a GTK application in Vala, you will need to install the Vala package:

pacman -S mingw-w64-ucrt-x86_64-vala

Building and distributing your application

Once you have installed the GTK as above, you should have little problem compiling a GTK app. In order to run it successfully, you will also need a GTK theme. There is some old builtin support for a Windows theme in GTK, but that makes your app look like a Windows 7 app. It is better to get a Windows 10 theme, for instance the Windows 10 Transformation Pack.

Step 1. Copy the icon assets from the Windows 10 Transformation Pack repository in a folder under your installation folder, under share/themes/Windows10:

for the GTK4 assets, copy the contents of the gtk-4.0 folder under share/themes/Windows10/gtk-4.0
for the GTK3 assets, copy the contents of the gtk-3.20 folder under share/themes/WIndows10/gtk-3.0

Step 2. You also need to copy the icons from the Adwaita theme, which you can download from the GNOME sources.

Step 3. Perform the same steps for the hicolor icons, which are the mandatory fallback for icons not available in Adwaita.

Step 4. To make GTK pick up this theme, put a file settings.ini under the etc folder in your installation folder:

for GTK4, use etc/gtk-4.0/settings.ini
for GTK3, use etc/gtk-3.0/settings.ini

The settings.ini file should contain:

[Settings]
gtk-theme-name=Windows10
gtk-font-name=Segoe UI 9

Step 5. To top it all off, run the glib-compile-schemas utility provided by GLib to generate the compiled settings schema in your installation folder:

glib-compile-schemas share/glib-2.0/schemas

Step 6. You can then zip up your installation folder, or use an installer generator to do that for you, and distribute the result.

You may use MSYS2 to build your GTK application and create an installer to distribute it. Your installer will need to ship your application build artifacts as well as GTK binaries and runtime dependencies.

Legal notes on distributing GTK with your application

You are welcome to redistribute GTK binaries, including applications that bundle them, on other web sites, CD-ROM, and other media. You don’t have to ask for permission. That’s one of the points of Free Software.

One important thing that the GNU licenses require is that you must also redistribute the source code on request. This usually means at least the gettext, GLib, GTK, Pango and ATK sources.