how to build gtk program using cmake

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This blog is a simple tutorial about how to build gtk program using cmake. cmake is an open source tool to build software program. it is different from Linux command tool. cmake is easy to learn and independent to the compiler. cmake takes inputs from a text file named as CMakeLists.txt and generates Makefile. After getting Makefile we can simply run make command to build the software program. Here is step by step instruction.

 how to build gtk program using cmake

• Let us write a simple gtk program main.c

#include<gtk/gtk.h>

GtkWidget *win;

int main(int argc, char **argv)
{
  gtk_init(&argc, &argv);
  
  win =gtk_window_new(GTK_WINDOW_TOPLEVEL);
  gtk_widget_show(win);

  // connect signal to quit window
  g_signal_connect(win,"destroy",G_CALLBACK(gtk_main_quit),NULL);

  gtk_main();
  return 0;
}

• Write a CMakeLists.txt

#set project name
project(hello-gtk)
#use pkg-config tool to detect gtk headers and link libs
FIND_PACKAGE(PkgConfig REQUIRED)

PKG_CHECK_MODULES(GTK3 REQUIRED gtk+-3.0)
#include gtk3 headers
INCLUDE_DIRECTORIES(${GTK3_INCLUDE_DIRS})
LINK_DIRECTORIES($GTK3_LIBRARY_DIRS})

#add other flags from gtk3
ADD_DEFINITIONS(${GTK3_CFLAGS_OTHER})

#add executabel compiled from main.c
ADD_EXECUTABLE(hellogtk main.c)

#link the target to the gtk+ libraries
TARGET_LINK_LIBRARIES(hellogtk ${GTK3_LIBRARIES})

• Now we have two files main.c and CMakeLists.txt.  run cmake . command in the current working directory. 

• After running cmake . command , a Makefile would be generated. To build the binary simply run #make command. running make command results a binary ( hellogtk ).  Below is video tutorial

Ref: https://cmake.org/